On October 4, 2017 — Palleon Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on developing the first Glycoimmune Checkpoint Inhibitors to treat cancer, reported the completion of a $47.6 million Series A financing from leading biotech venture investors SR One, Pfizer Ventures, Vertex Ventures HC, Takeda Ventures, and AbbVie Ventures (Press release, Palleon Pharmaceutical, OCT 4, 2017, View Source [SID1234520792]).

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The Series A funding will be used to establish and advance a first-in-class pipeline of drug candidates targeting Glycoimmune Checkpoints — receptors on immune cells that normally distinguish "self" versus "non-self" but get exploited in cancer to create immunosuppression that allows tumors to thrive. Glycoimmune Checkpoints function in ways similar to T cell checkpoints, with a few important differences: they are activated by binding to cell-surface glycans — the sugar molecules found on cell surfaces — rather than to other proteins, and they are expressed in a wider range of immune cells involved in the anti-cancer response, including both innate and adaptive immune cells. In addition, Glycoimmune Checkpoints appear to be exploited by most types of cancer, and a tumor’s unique glycan signature offers the prospect of selecting patients who are likely to respond to therapy.

Palleon has exclusive licenses to the intellectual property of discoveries made by its scientific co-founders, Carolyn Bertozzi, PhD, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Paul Crocker, PhD, Professor of Glycoimmunology and Head of the Division of Cell Signaling and Immunology at the University of Dundee, Scotland. Bertozzi’s and Crocker’s scientific discoveries in the separate fields of tumor glycoscience and human immunology were brought together to create a unique platform which enables Palleon to develop cancer drugs targeting Glycoimmune Checkpoints.

Jim Broderick, MD, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Palleon, commented, "The most meaningful breakthroughs often occur at the intersection of diverse and seemingly unrelated scientific disciplines. Palleon was spawned by bringing together new findings in glycoscience and human immunology, which resulted in unexpected implications for oncology. The convergence of these two fields has enabled us to develop a novel class of medicines that could have a significant impact on the lives of cancer patients."

"We have known for decades that certain glycan patterns such as hypersialylation appear on the surface of tumors, and that these patterns are correlated with poor clinical outcomes; however, we did not understand the functional role of these tumor-specific glycans in immunosuppression," said Dr. Bertozzi. "We now know that tumors evolve in such a way that their cell surface glycans "trick" the immune system, which prevents many types of immune cells from detecting and destroying cancer cells. We are using this knowledge to develop new and innovative cancer therapies for patients."

Palleon’s Convergence Platform is driven by the combined expertise of its world-class founding team in tumor glycoscience and human immunology. The company has incorporated a range of technologies to overcome the historic scientific barriers that have made glycoscience a challenging area of study. Armed with a unique understanding of the differences in immune pattern recognition between humans and other species, the company has integrated human biology into every step of the drug development process, including target validation, in vitro models, in vivo models, and translational research. The company has assembled the core expertise needed to pioneer a new field in this complex area of biology, and its proprietary knowledge will define Palleon’s leadership in this rapidly emerging area.

Palleon was originally incubated in the Cambridge offices of SR One, where Dr. Broderick served as the firm’s first Entrepreneur-in-Residence, working closely with SR One President Jens Eckstein. "We are very excited about the launch of Palleon. Within the dynamic field of immuno-oncology, Palleon has forged an entirely new pathway for targeting the immune system. The unique features of Glycoimmune Checkpoints will make possible a much wider range of rational combination therapies to treat cancer," said Dr. Eckstein. "Palleon is built on the discoveries of its exceptional scientific founders who have identified Glycoimmune Checkpoints as a means to transform the treatment of cancer and improve and extend the lives of patients throughout the world."
About Palleon Pharmaceuticals

Palleon Pharmaceuticals is the leading biotechnology company focused on developing Glycoimmune Checkpoint inhibitors to treat cancer. The company’s proprietary Convergence Platform integrates technologies and insights from world-renowned scientific leaders in the fields of glycoscience and human immunology to create a novel approach to treating cancer. By targeting multiple immune cell types, Glycoimmune Checkpoint inhibitors will tackle resistance to first-generation immuno-oncology agents, and make possible a wider range of rational combination therapies to treat cancer. While Palleon is focused primarily on oncology, the Convergence Platform is applicable to other therapeutic areas including infectious diseases, neurodegeneration, inflammation, and fibrosis. The company is advancing its pipeline and development programs with a $47.6 million Series A financing from leading biotech venture investors SR One, Pfizer Ventures, Vertex Ventures HC, Takeda Ventures, and AbbVie Ventures. Learn more at www.palleonpharma.com.

A stealth start-up called 3T Biosciences has raised more than $12 million in a massive seed round led by early Facebook investor Sean Parker and including Peter Thiel, according to a person familiar with the company’s financing (External Source, 3T Biosciences, OCT 4, 2017, View Source [SID1234525823]).

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Little is known about 3T Biosciences, but this person said the company is led by cancer biology PhD student and investor, Asset Management Ventures’ principal Luke Lee, as well as a group of academics from Christopher Garcia’s biology lab at Stanford.

3T Biosciences is in the T-cell therapy space, the person said, meaning that it is among a growing group of new start-ups working to bolster the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. That’s a different approach than traditional medicines like chemotherapy, which kill off both cancerous and healthy cells.

Sean Parker speaking at the 2015 CGI Annual Meeting in New York.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
Sean Parker speaking at the 2015 CGI Annual Meeting in New York.
These approaches have not proved successful for all cancer patients and are still early. Juno Therapeutics, a Seattle-based company in the space, needed to halt development for its drug therapy after three patient deaths.

Still, Silicon Valley’s venture investors see an opportunity to make a return with Gilead Sciences’ recently acquiring cancer immunotherapy company Kite Pharma for $11.9 billion. That follows Abbvie’s $10.2 billion acquisition of Founders Fund-backed cancer drug start-up Stemcentrx in 2016.

These venture firms also see potential to combine traditional drug therapeutics with new technologies like machine learning in the hopes of accelerating the timeline and reducing the cost of bringing a new drug to market.

The round was led by Parker through his venture fund, the person said, with participation from Thiel Capital and several other firms.

The prestigious Fierce 15 biotech award has come to symbolize novelty and being at the forefront of biotechnology development amongst privately held businesses. The winners of this award are aiming at breakthroughs and big things, not at being ‘me-too’.

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For years, 1stOncology has taken special interest in those awardees with positions in oncology or whose technologies we deem beneficial in the oncology area. With oncology being one of the fastest growing therapeutic fields, it comes as no surprise that eleven out of the fifteen 2017 Fierce 15 Biotech Award winners are oncology companies. The majority are U.S. based (8), originating from Massachusetts (4), California (2), New Jersey (1) and Texas (1). Two companies are based in Canada and one in the United Kingdom.

Awardee	Founded	Country
PsiOxus Therapeutics	2006	United Kingdom
PMV Pharma	2013	USA
Rubius Therapeutics	2014	USA
Vividion Therapeutics	2014	USA
Gritstone Oncology	2015	USA
Turnstone Biologics	2015	Canada
Aravive Biologics	2016	USA
Magenta Therapeutics	2016	USA
Relay Therapeutics	2016	USA
Repare Therapeutics	2016	Canada
Tango Therapeutics	2017	USA

These companies were all founded between 2006 and as recent as this year. PsiOxus Therapeutics is the oldest company with Tango Therapeutics being the new kid on the block. Most of the companies were founded in 2016.

Many of them have recently secured financing, like Magenta Therapeutics ($50 million (2017)), PMV Pharma ($74 million (2017)), Rubius Therapeutics ($120 million (2017)), Tango Therapeutics ($55 million (2017)) and Relay Therapeutics ($57 million (2016)).

Among the technologies and discovery engines of the above companies we find gene editing, oncolytic viruses, synthetic lethality and neoantigen-based immunotherapies etc. Target interest falls on traditional hot areas such as tumor adoptive responses, oncogenic drivers, tumor suppressor gene loss and immune evasion, but also new avenues are being explored like the Unfolded Protein Response (UPR) pathway etc.

Morover, Rubius Therapeutics is developing Red-Cell Therapeutics (RCTs) as a new class of medicines for the treatment of cancer and albeit not specifically talking about oncology, Vividion Therapeutics is developing drugs based on technology that radically expands  the druggability of the human proteome.

Interested in understanding and surveying the pipelines and progress of these best and brightest award winners, not only from this year, but back to 2010? We would like to welcome you to join us for a free 30 minute 1stOncology demo to show you the difference 1stOncology can make in your day to day work.

It’s no secret that discovering and developing cancer drugs is an expensive and risky endeavor. But Cullinan Oncology is betting that a financial approach, rather than a purely scientific one, can improve the odds, and it has raised $150 million to test its approach.

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The Series A investment for Cambridge, MA-based Cullinan was co-led by the UBS Oncology Impact Fund and F2 Ventures. The UBS Oncology Fund is managed by Cambridge venture capital firm MPM Capital.

Investors want to put their money into healthcare, and into cancer drugs in particular, says Cullinan CEO Owen Hughes, who is also a managing director at MPM. But many cancer drug companies are focused on a single compound. This "binary situation," where a company’s fortunes are linked to the success or failure of one drug, makes for a very risky investment, Hughes says.

Just as a real estate investor might bet on a range of properties, Cullinan aims to spread investor risk across several drug candidates. The company will develop its portfolio from external sources, Hughes says. Internally, Cullinan will work on concepts and modeling of next-generation cancer treatments.

The goal is to end a drug program quickly if the early research suggests it won’t work. Hughes contends that under Cullinan’s model, killing off one or two compounds won’t diminish the value of the company.

"If we don’t get the results we like, we will shut it down and move on to other projects in the portfolio," Hughes says.

The Cullinan portfolio will have anywhere from eight to 12 drugs at any given time. Each drug will have a dedicated chief executive. But Cullinan won’t build large teams around each drug. Instead, the programs—whether they come from within Cullinan or are licensed from outside the company—will share resources within Cullinan and also outsource work to contract research organizations, both of which are cash-conserving measures. Hughes says that while Cullinan has the intellectual and scientific capacity to create new molecules, the company is choosing a different approach that the company hopes gets to a decision point more quickly, and at less cost, compared to traditional drug companies.

The idea of collecting drug assets and having them share resources is catching on in biotech investing. Last month, Palo Alto, CA-based BridgeBio Pharma raised $135 million for its "hub and spoke" model that splits each drug into a subsidiary that shares in the central resources of the parent. Boston-based biotech accelerator Xontogeny also aims to offer its portfolio companies the opportunity to share resources in certain areas, such as regulatory affairs.

Cullinan’s scientific work is led by co-founder and chief scientific officer Patrick Baeuerle, who is also a managing director at MPM. Baeuerle has co-founded oncology startups in the firm’s portfolio including TCR2 Therapeutics in Cambridge, South San Francisco, CA-based Harpoon Therapeutics, and Maverick Therapeutics, a Brisbane, CA, company. Cullinan has three compounds in its pipeline so far; Baeuerle would only describe them only in general terms. The company’s lead drug goes after a "well-known cancer target" that is, or was, considered undruggable, he says. This compound, which Baeuerle says was initially developed at a U.S. university, has potential applications in many cancers and is expected to start clinical trials in 15 to 18 months.

The other two Cullinan programs are internally developed immune-oncology treatments: one is a way of stimulating the immune system to fight cancer and the other is a type of cancer vaccine that Baeuerle says goes after a target that has not been addressed before.

The external candidates that Cullinan brings into its pipeline could come from universities or drug companies, though Baeuerle adds that compounds from companies tend to be further along in development. Cullinan is mainly looking for compounds that have yet to reach clinical trials or are in Phase 1 testing. At the rate that Cullinan is finding external innovations in cancer research, Baeuerle says the company’s pipeline might end up weighted toward external drug candidates.

"We’re agnostic where it comes from as long as it’s great science, as long as it has great promise to become a drug," Baeuerle says.

Hughes says that how much the company spends on each drug candidate will vary from drug to drug. The goal is to advance a drug far enough along to show how it could work, then license it, sell it, or perhaps spin it off into a separate company that goes public. The full $150 million of the Series A round is available now to Cullinan, though Hughes says the company won’t spend it all at once. But he adds that as Cullinan make progress, the company could raise even more money in the future.

Photo by Cullinan Oncology.

On October 3, 2017 Vium reported the selection of OncoSynergy, a UCSF oncology therapeutics spinout, as the first recipient of its "Next Generation Disease Model Grant" of $100,000 worth of research services (Press release, OncoSynergy, OCT 3, 2017, View Source [SID1234520773]). The companies will collaborate on a study of OncoSynergy’s lead drug candidate OS2966 to facilitate development of an optimized and clinically relevant experimental model of malignant ascites (MA), a complication of metastatic ovarian cancer (OC) associated with poor prognosis. The study will be the first to collect in-depth quality of life (QOL) metrics using an established experimental model of MA.

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OncoSynergy has already demonstrated efficacy of OS2966, its lead monoclonal antibody therapeutic candidate designated as an Orphan Drug by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in multiple models of OC, including alleviation of clinical signs of MA. The new study will therefore use Vium’s Smart Housing to increase the therapeutic window to more closely model disease progression in humans, thereby yielding more accurate measurement of disease metrics and improved tracking of QOL measures.

"We are pleased to collaborate with OncoSynergy and to fund this innovative study in a disease area with high unmet research and treatment needs," said Vium Chief Scientific Officer David Hutto, Ph.D, DVM, DACVP. "It’s a great match for Vium, as it allows us to apply our fully automated, low-touch technology and novel digital metrics to continuously assess changes in ovarian cancer-related malignant ascites — signs that would be difficult to evaluate using traditional methods."

"We believe the ability to continuously collect multimodal data noninvasively will be a game-changer for oncology studies, in which the current standard for decades has been binary," commented W. Shawn Carbonell, MD, Ph.D, co-founder and CEO of OncoSynergy. "We are excited to work with Vium to develop this novel and more humane approach to studying animal models of orphan malignancies such as ovarian cancer and glioblastoma, as these diseases are our main focus."