License/Partnership

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Talk about a good week for PTC.

A day after announcing the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation is dropping $25M on PTC124 (PTC’s novel oral therapy in late-stage development for the treatment of genetic disorders due to nonsense mutations) and funding the phase 2 trial, Genzyme and PTC Therapeutics announced an exclusive global collaboration to develop and commercialize PTC124.

Deal Terms
- PTC will commercialize PTC124 in the United States and Canada, and Genzyme will commercialize the treatment in all other countries.
- Genzyme will make a $100 million up- front payment to PTC Therapeutics.
- PTC will conduct and be financially responsible for the phase 2b trial of PTC124 in DMD, the phase 2b trial in CF, and two proof-of-concept studies in other indications to be determined.
- Once these four studies are completed, the companies will share research and development costs equally.
- Genzyme and PTC will each bear the sales, marketing and other costs associated with commercialization of PTC124 in their respective territories.
- PTC is eligible to receive up to $337 million in total milestone payments, as follows: up to $165 million in development and approval milestones, the majority of which are to be paid upon approvals in Genzyme territories; and up to $172 million in sales milestones, contingent upon the achievement of specific sales levels. The sales milestone payments begin when annual net revenues reach $300 million, and increase in increments through revenues of $2.4 billion.
- PTC is also eligible to receive tiered double-digit royalties from sales in Genzyme territories.

About PTC124
PTC124 is an orally delivered, investigational new small molecule drug for the treatment of genetic disorders due to nonsense mutations. Nonsense mutations are single-point alterations in the genetic code that prematurely stop the translation process, preventing production of a full-length, functional protein. In phase 2a clinical trials in nonsense-mutation-mediated cystic fibrosis and in nonsense-mutation-mediated Duchenne muscular dystrophy, PTC124 has demonstrated the ability to produce functional protein across a variety of nonsense mutation types.

Opinion
While Genzyme paid a pretty hefty upfront, this is a pretty good deal all around. Genzyme gets a promising candidate that fits perfectly with it’s orphan/niche market pipeline and PTC gets some pretty hefty cash and a partner willing to go the distance with a therapy that will never reach blockbuster status.

One caveat though, it should be stated that this type of therapy would only be appropriate for those patients who contain at least one mutant allele that is a premature stop codon. The majority of CF (~ 95%) and DMD (~ 85 to 90%) patients would not benefit from this treatment because they have other forms of the disorders that are not caused by stop mutations.

The upside for Genzyme here is that after CF and DMD, PTC-124 could be extended for use as a potential therapy in other single gene disorders with nonsense mutations such as hemophilia, neurofibromatosis, retinitis pigmentosa, bullous skin diseases, and lysosomal storage disorders.

-> press release
-> xconomy take
-> fierce comments

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CoLucid announced it closed a $25M series B financing. The main phase 2, development compound is COL-144 (5-HT1F agonist for the treatment of migraine), a drug they in-licensed from Eli Lilly after it completed phase 1 trials.

While the $25M series B headline immediately caught my eye, it didn’t take much more reading to find something that annoyed me.

CoLucid refers to COL-144 as first-in-class, Neurally Acting Anti-Migraine Agent (or NAAMA). Well, isn’t that cute. Neurally acting?? Where else would it work, the spleen? the femur? If there’s one thing I won’t stand for, it’s a completely useless acronym.

The other thing that immediately caught my eye was that the phase 2 trial was dosed IV, while the drug is presumably going to be marketed orally. There must have been a reason for the IV dosing. Maybe there was a small formulary issue but perhaps there is a more sinister problem afoot.

Eli Lilly has had at least three 5-HT1F agonist programs and one actually almost made it to phase 3 trials (LY334370 successfully completed three phase 2’s). All the programs have seemingly been discontinued with no explanation or publication of negative results. I don’t think it would be unreasonable, since COL-144 may use a similar scaffold to one of the failed programs, that there are inherent PK, PD or toxicology issues.

My blatant speculation aside, 4 venture firms have so far dumped $41.5M into CoLucid in just around three years. If the company manges to get this delivery issue worked out and they show comparable efficacy to the new generic sumatriptan (Imitrex), I’m sure a beefy buyout is in the future.

One month after licensing EU rights to Lundbeck for $100M upfront (a deal I crapped on by the way), Myriad has discontinued the development of Flurizan for treating Alzheimer’s disease. Surprised? Not me.

As I’ve noted before (in multiple places), I’m not a fan of gamma-secretase modulators for AD. Every trial run so far has failed the main ADAS-cog endpoint and what good is an Alzhiemer’s treatment that doesn’t significantly increase cognition? This is simply math.

As for the deal, there was speculation that Lundbeck had seen some preliminary results that justified paying an un-godly $100M upfront for a drug that failed ADAS-cog in the phase 2 trial. This was obviously not the case and maybe some smart shareholders will punish them today, though I doubt few people will notice.

I hate to be that guy, but I told you so.

On the upside, I guess I can finish the Flurizan history timeline I started a few months ago:

FLURIZAN (rough) History

• 2003 - Begin pivotal II/III trial in prostate cancer
• 2003- Begin phase II Alzheimer’s study
• 2005 - Fails to meet primary endpoint in prostate cancer
• 2005 - Fails to meet primary endpoint in AD study (ADAS-cog)
• 2006 - Begin 2, long, phase III AD studies
• 2007 - Prostate Cancer indication officially scrapped
• May 22, 2008 - Sells Euro AD rights to Lundbeck for $100M upfront
• June 30, 2008 - Fails all endpoints and is discontinued in Alzheimer’s disease.

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BioInvent and ThromboGenics have entered into a license agreement with Roche for, TB-403, their novel mAb targeting Placental Growth Factor (PIGF) for the treatment of cancer. Under the terms of the agreement:

Roche will pay BioInvent and ThromboGenics an upfront payment of €50 million. In addition, BioInvent and ThromboGenics could potentially receive up to €450 million over the term of the collaboration based on the successful completion of a series of development and commercial milestones for multiple indications, as well as double digit royalties on potential product sales, including any backup antibodies based on inhibition of PlGF. ThromboGenics, which discovered TB-403, will receive 60% and BioInvent 40% of the revenue from the deal. Roche will have a worldwide, exclusive license to develop and commercialize TB-403. BioInvent and ThromboGenics will retain co-promotion rights for the product in the Nordic, Baltic and Benelux regions.

TB-403 (Anti-PIGF) has completed an initial Phase I clinical trial and recently received approval to enter a Phase Ib dose escalation trial. This Phase Ib trial will be conducted in patients with advanced cancer and is due to commence shortly in Denmark.

Oncology therapeutics are such a hot field right now and ThromboGenics/BioInvent scored a pretty sweet deal. €50 million upfront for phase I compound is way above the norm and is usually seen after successful completion of phase 2a or 2b but given the climate, I’m not totally surprised.

I also think Roche was the right partner in the strategic pipeline compatibility sense. They already market Avastin (with the Genentech connection) for multiple types of cancer, and from the press release, targeting PIGF would be complementary (a mAb against PIGF would inhibit angiogenesis).

As with all deals, time will tell but from the 20,000 foot perspective, this one looks like a good one.

I’ll admit, I’m an RNAi hater, but more on that later. Alnylam and Takeda announced today that they have formed an alliance in RNAi therapeutics covering the fields of oncology and metabolic disease. Here are the deal details:

Takeda becomes Alnylam’s strategic partner for RNAi therapeutics over a five-year period

$150M in upfront and near term tech transfer payments

Potentially valued at >$1B dependent on R&D milestones / clinical development

Alnylam obtains opt-in options to co-develop and co-commercialize Takeda RNAi therapeutic programs in the U.S. market on a 50-50 basis.

The scope of the partnership can be expanded to include additional fields with a $50 million per field expansion payment.

Alnylam obtains opt-in options to co-develop and co-commercialize Takeda RNAi therapeutic programs in the U.S. market on a 50-50 basis.

Interesting deal at an interesting time for Takeda. They have been on a shopping spree recently (see: Millennium) tying to offset the coming generic competition of Prevacid and Actos and have not been shy about waving cash around. I’m not familiar with the patent space of RNAi therapeutics in terms of methods or even composition of matter but I’m guessing this might justify price tag. Also, based on the number of alliances (including ones with: GSK, Novartis, Roche, Biogen and Medtronic), it seems that others think Alnylam has something special.

To me, RNAi seems to be one of those technologies that is always, “just around the corner” and, over the last 5 years has always been the next hot technology. Like anti-sense DNA oligos, RNAi has been around for a while and so far, has proved to be a really nifty research technique with not a whole lot of therapeutic benefit. This is why the deal doesn’t make a lot of sense in vein of filling pipeline needs; Takeda needs late stage compounds now, not a decade from now. Though relatively, $150M upfront isn’t a terribly large amount to pay when you’re sitting on $20B in cash for the sole purpose of M&A / alliances.

Ultimately, even though I’m an RNAi hater, this is a decent deal for both sides. Takeda gets to share a slice of “next great technology” pie while Alnylam investors can further justify their investment in a drug company with ~$1B market cap, in spite it having only one product in clinical development.

Myriad Genetics announced today that it has licensed the European commercialization rights of its phase 3, beta-amyloid reducer (FLURIZAN) to H. Lundbeck A/S today for $100M upfront and $250M in developmental milestones. In addition, they managed to squeeze Lundbeck escalating, 20-39% royalties on sales. One hundred million upfront for the rights to commercialize in Europe alone is pretty spectacular. When you take the status of FLURIZAN into account, the deal gets even better.

FLURIZAN (rough) History

• 2003 - Begin pivotal II/III trial in prostate cancer
• 2003- Begin phase II Alzheimer’s study
• 2005 - Fails to meet primary endpoint in prostate cancer
• 2005 - Fails to meet primary endpoint in AD study (ADAS-cog)
• 2006 - Begin 2, long, phase III AD studies
• 2007 - Prostate Cancer indication officially scrapped
• 2008 - Sells Euro AD rights to Lundbeck for $100M upfront

Simply amazing. As I mentioned in this post, the only thing that matters to the FDA for Alzheimer’s (at this point anyway) is ADAS-cog improvement, which FLURIZAN has already failed. I’m marking my calendar “FLURIZAN Results Month” for the whole of June. This should be fun.

(UPDATE: The In Vivo Blog has a fantastic, though optimistic, review of the same deal. Much better than my cynical and shot analysis)

A little over a month after Daiichi Sankyo (post-merger) ditched their license for KAI-9803, Bristol-Myers Squibb agreed to a partnership agreement with similar terms. Originally, KAI received $20 million upfront from Sankyo, as well as potential milestone payments of up to $300 million for two initial indications and milestone payments on any future delta PKC inhibitors developed.

Under the terms of the new BMS collaboration, KAI will receive an upfront cash payment of $25 million. BMS will fund all future development, including the Phase 2b clinical trial to be conducted by KAI. In addition, at KAI’s option, Bristol-Myers Squibb will purchase $10 million of KAI stock at the time of a qualified initial public offering, or under other specified future conditions. KAI may receive up to $192 million in milestone payments. KAI could be eligible for additional milestones if other compounds are developed. KAI will have an option to co-promote KAI-9803 in the United States and will receive royalty payments on product net sales worldwide.

KAI-9803 is an inhibitor of delta protein kinase C and is designed to dampen the size of a heart attack and improve clinical outcomes during treatment of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). During a heart attack, blood flow to the heart is compromised resulting in myocardial and endothelial cell necrosis and apoptosis. Selective inhibition of the delta PKC isozyme by KAI-9803 may reduce the injury to myocardial and endothelial cells during a heart attack and reduce the risk of death or heart failure. KAI-9803 has received Fast Track designation from the FDA.

Usually, agreements take more than a month to announce. BMS must think KAI has something special here, though as a rule, intracardiac injections scare me.

Enzon Pharmaceuticals, on the reported urging of uber-investor Carl Icahn, will spin off a NewCo along with the majority of the company’s core technology (PEGylation), their entire published preclinical pipeline (i.e.; their RNA antagonist oncology portfolio) and $150m of funding from Enzon. Not a bad way to start a company, right?

Maybe I’m way off here but it seems to me in analyzing this deal that the NewCo gets all the goodies while Enzon is left with a manufacturing plant and a stable of marginal drugs (zero out of four therapies have over $50m a year in revenue). Now, I don’t mean to imply that I think Enzon is a bad company - hell, they’ve managed to make more profit this quarter, than any pharma company I’ve ever worked for - I’m just saying they are selling their future based on the advice of a man notorious for breaking up companies and wringing every last dime out of a shakeup. Just listen to the PR speak from their CEO and tell me if it makes strategic sense:

“By separating these unique businesses into two focused companies, the opportunities for both the specialty pharmaceutical business and the biotechnology business could be substantially enhanced and greater value could be created than under the current structure,” said Jeffrey H. Buchalter, Chairman, President and CEO. “Operating separately will allow each company to benefit from greater strategic and managerial focus and appeal to their own unique shareholders. The separation will enable the two businesses to compete more effectively in their respective markets and optimize their business goals, research initiatives and capital requirements. We look forward to creating this opportunity for the shareholders,” said Mr. Buchalter.

So… 1-x= more than 2, due to focus and appeal from unique shareholders? Interesting. I guess it would be wrong to beg for a quick exit strategy via big pharma acquisition for NewCo in the initial press release. But it doesn’t stop there, the bullshit continues:

“The specialty pharmaceutical business will continue its long-standing track record in providing life saving therapies for patients. The business has strong fundamentals, including stable revenue, cash flow, and strong assets,” said Mr. Buchalter. “Upon completion of the spin-off, Enzon will have the resources to better focus its strategy and compete more effectively in the specialty pharmaceutical market.”

Yes, without all that pesky preclinical discovery and development going on, the company can focus on its stable revenue and cash flow until the patents run out and they have to begin thinking about the future!

I don’t think I’m the only one with this opinion either. Even while releasing earnings for the quarter that showed a 20% increase in revenue over 1Q07 and netting the company a ~$2m profit, the stock was penalized ~8%. Is it a shock to learn I don’t think this is enough of a drop? I don’t generally think shareholders should reward the loss of the future earnings potential of the company and the give away the core company technology. But what do I know?

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In other Enzon related news, I just found this press release about the pay of the CEO:

DellaCamera Capital Master Fund Ltd., a 5.8% stakeholder of Enzon Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ENZN), said Thursday that it’s troubled by the compensation granted Enzon Chairman and Chief Executive Jeffrey Buchalter and calls for the resignation of three directors.

DellaCamera sent a letter to Enzon’s board on Thursday, saying that it’s also reviewing its voting alternatives with respect to the three directors up for election at the company’s May 22 annual meeting of shareholders.

DellaCamera is calling for the resignation of Goran A. Ando, Rolf A. Classon and Victor P. Micati, who are the current members of Enzon’s compensation committee.

So I did a little research and it turns out, Jeff Buchalter made $773,558 base with $1,162,500 in bonuses for a total cash compensation of ~$2m. Add to that the just over $3.1m in equity granted to Jeff and he pulled in a total of ~$5.2m in compensation last year (almost 3X any other executive at the company). It’s good to be the king.

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(photo of Icahn from samlustgarden under a creative commons license)

On a disease sexiness scale from 0-100, chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-c) are close to rounding out the bottom of that range however, they remain important medical problems. CIC accounts for roughly 6 million related outpatient visits each year and just over a quarter million hospital admissions with constipation as the primary diagnosis. In addition, an estimated 12 million Americans suffer from IBS-c and many have symptoms for a decade. Since the withdrawal of the 5-HT4 agonist, Zelnorm (tegaserod), by Novartis (NYSE:NVS) in March of last year due to possible heart risks, there has been no approved therapy for IBS-c.

Amitiza (lubiprostone), from Sucampo (NASDAQ:SCMP) and Takeda (holds the US rights), is a chloride channel activator that works in the small bowel and has already been approved by the FDA for CIC and yesterday, was approved for the treatment of IBS-c. The drugs is safe (though does have an adverse event (AE) nausea rate of ~30%), effective and most importantly from a safety standpoint, is not absorbed. It has always puzzled me why its sales have lagged behind expectations (only $48m in ‘06 and $154m in ‘06). I’ve always assumed the reason was the AE nausea combined with a slow marketing ramp up and hoped that it wasn’t that physicians were scared away from prescribing therapies after the Zelnorm fiasco (I generally give physicians more credit than that).

Since Zelnorm was only approved to treat IBS-c, the sales numbers, until now, weren’t directly comparable but I’m interested in seeing the year end increase in sales to tease out the meaning behind the initially poor revenues. In its final year, Zelnorm sold almost $500m and was well on its way of surpassing that mark before being killed and I would expect the numbers for Amitiza in the next few years to be higher than that.

I think Sucampo (which will also received a $50m milestone payment from Takeda) has a winner in Amitiza and so far, the market agrees. SCMP is up 38% (to 16.75) after an hour of trading on the market.

(Photo from Polandeze on Flickr under a Creative Commons license)

Astellas Pharma, Inc. and CoMentis, Inc. announced today that the companies have entered into an agreement to develop products from CoMentis’ beta-secretase inhibitor program, including the recently initiated, phase 2, lead candidate compound CTS-21166, an oral beta-secretase inhibitor for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The agreement also includes a research collaboration to develop additional beta-secretase inhibitors.

Upon closing, CoMentis will receive an upfront payment of $80 million and an equity investment of $20 million. CoMentis has the opportunity to receive up to $660 million in development milestones and may also receive performance-based commercialization milestones. In addition, CoMentis has the right to receive development milestones for next-generation beta-secretase inhibitors discovered under the terms of the research collaboration. Astellas will fund 100% of the pre-Phase III global development costs and CoMentis will share the Phase III development costs. Astellas has exclusive worldwide commercialization rights while CoMentis retains the right to co-promote in the U.S., where profit will be shared. CoMentis will receive royalties on sales outside the U.S.

Not a bad day for CoMentis; $100M upfront is a nice chunk of change for any program, let alone one that barely cleared phase I and showed no cognitive improvements (they weren’t measured, go figure). The mechanism of action of CTS-21166 centers around inhibiting one of the enzymes (beta-secretase) that clips off a part of a larger protein (APP) to form amyloid-beta, which comprises the plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. It is thought by reducing the amount of amyloid, the disease course may be reversed or, at least slowed; a treatment outcome that is not currently possible. There is a sort of chicken and egg game over the origin of these plaques in Alzheimer’s. Some believe the formation of these plaques is the origin of Alzheimer’s and others take the opposite tack saying the disease itself creates the plaque.

There is controversy however, as Derek Lowe points out on his blog In The Pipeline. A one year old PNAS paper shows that mice which over express APP but lack beta-secretase, actually do worse on cognitive tests than mice that only over express APP. In the clinical realm, bapineuzumab, a mAb targeting amyloid-beta from Wyeth and Elan, is currently in phase 2 and 3 and has yet to release any data including the all important ADAS-Cog score. If these therapies do not reverse the cognition score (as measured by ADAS-Cog) the FDA might not approve them regardless.

Alzheimer’s is a tough disease and eventually, given enough shots on goal, one or two will go in. If bapineuzumab is successful, CTS-21166, would potentially have an advantage long term due to the oral (or so they say, the ph1 was IV) dosing and I’m sure the BD people at CoMentis delightfully highlighted that fact. This proof of concept for the mechanism of action will come mid to late ‘08 when Wyeth releases results of the extended phase 2 of bapineuzumab. I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled.

(Photo from Simon Davison on Flickr under a Creative Commons license)

Introduction

A significant chunk of my job in business development entails competitive intelligence and I’ve found the lack of biotech/pharmaceutical specific guide in this area a bit distressing. In that vein, I’ve tried to compile a guide / list of services and hacks I currently use to keep up on the industry in general and find relevant information for partnering our programs. This list is by no means the only or best way to accomplish these tasks… just the way I currently use them. Suggestions?

$$ Databases

With the convenience comes a price. I have no idea how much we pay per seat for any of these and I’m sure I’d be appalled to know so I’ll stay blissfully ignorant. Essentially, 95% of the information contained in these databases is publicly available and you pay for ease, time-savings, context and linkability.

- ThomsonPharma/Integrity: I consider these (Thomson recently purchased Integrity) to be the 800lb gorilla of hyperlinked pharmaceutical information. The lag time from company press release or presentation of data, to inclusion of data is decent (sometimes a day or two, other times it can take a month). The real value though, is in the manipulation of information, automatic updates and the degree of connectivity they display. With a few clicks, you can find related patents, proposed chemical structures and sales number for all compounds for an indication or mechanism of action. While they lack true natural language searching they are loaded with nice, but mostly superfluous visual effects and contain the ability to create mostly useless charts on the fly.

- Recombinant Capital: Database of biopharma alliance information. Quite useful for deal information, contract language and tracking the flow of cash for financing rounds and milestone payments.

- Datamonitor: Need a 180 page report on fragile X syndrome with 8 year market projections?… this is your site. Their numbers projections shouldn’t be taken as the gospel and sometimes the reports aren’t updated as quickly as I’d like, but as for finding a critical mass of statistical information about a topic including a market summary, SWOT analysis, disease briefing and pipeline review, a Datamonitor report can’t be beat.

Publicly Available Sources

Google Searching
In the internet age, where everything can be found through Google, it pays to know how to search and how to refine your searches by using operaors to find that needle in a haystack. You can find a two page cheat sheet here but I can’t resist showing the few that I use with regularity:
- [herbs -basil]: all pages with the word “herbs” but not “basil.” Helpful for reducing the number of results
- [searchtermshere site:www.yourwebsitehere.com]: Searches only the website you chose for relevant information.
- [searchtermshere filetype:pdf]: good for finding pfds, word, ppt files associated with a company or drug of interest. Really useful when using with “site:” trick above.

I’m an engineer by training, which means I’m pretty lazy and I’d never do something repetitively that I can get a computer to do for me. In this vein, let me tell you about Google Alerts. Google allows you to save searches that it will then run automagically and send an update should anything change. If nothing changes, you don’t get an email. It is that simple and simply fantastic. Want to know whenever FTY720 is in the news? Set up an alert to email you. You have to be kind of clever about how you word your searches (great opportunity to use the techniques above) so that you don’t get overwhelmed with emails but if you do it correctly, the signal to noise ratio should be acceptable.

Clinical Trial Information
Looking for clinical trial information? Clinicaltrials.gov, WHO trial search or Centerwatch should do the trick.

Currently Approved Drug Information
- To find drug pricing information I use: Drugstore or RegenceRx
- Patent expiry information: The Orange Book
- Patent searching: USPTO, WIPO
- FDA/Regulatory approval docs (literally thousands of pages of potentially useful information): Drugs@FDA

Company Research
- To track company filings in an automated fashion I use SECInfo.com and subscribe the the filings of companies I am interested in. Every time they file a doc with the SEC, it gets dropped into my inbox. Signal to noise is pretty low but occasionally I’ll get lucky by spotting an updated S1-A, tracking an IPO or even just tracking latest earnings results. This service also lets you search the EDGAR database so instead of heading to the SEC site, I usually just go here.

Codon Devices, Inc., (founded in 2004 and funded through series B by Alloy Ventures, Flagship Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Tactics II Venture) and Merrimack Pharmaceuticals announced today that they have entered into a research, development and licensing agreement to apply Codon’s proprietary BioLOGIC™ platform to the development of novel therapeutic proteins identified by Merrimack.

Codon will apply its BioLOGIC™ platform to rapidly engineer and optimize therapeutic proteins according to specifications designed by Merrimack. Strait from the PR machine comes this description of BioLOGIC:

“Codon’s BioLOGIC™ platform combines sophisticated computational design algorithms, high quality library construction and a novel protein display system particularly suited for engineering functional properties of large proteins such as antibodies. Merrimack is developing a pipeline of products targeting the therapeutic areas of autoimmune disease and cancer.”

Even with a graduate degree in biomedical engineering, I’m still not sure exactly what that means. Seems like a lot of garbage masquerading as definition. Up until now, Codon has been primarily focused on churning out custom gene fragments and/or genetically customized cells for its customers. This agreement pulls the company in a radically different, yet potentially more lucrative, direction.

Under the terms of the agreement, Codon will receive clinical milestone payments and royalties on net sales that may result from Merrimack’s development and commercialization of any protein product coming out of the collaboration. Other terms were not disclosed.

(PRNewswire)

Pieris AG announced today that it raised $38M USD in a series B financing round lead by OrbiMed Advisors LLC and NovoNordisk.
The funding will allow initiation of clinical development of its
VEGF-modulating cancer therapeutic, PRS-050. All existing investors
also participated in this financing round including Global Life Science Ventures, Gilde Healthcare Partners and Forbion Capital Partners.

The company uses what they call Anticalin technology. It is a
catchy trademark for a class of proteins found in bacteria and in
humans called lipocalins. They are a large and diverse group of small
proteins (or protein domains) that are responsible for shuttling
hydrophobic molecules and such around the cell (lipids and steroids).
The idea behind the company’s technology is that by modifying the
exposed loops at the end of each run of a 20kD-ish beta-barrel
structure, they can use the engineered protein like an anti-body by
tailoring these loops to antagonize any protein of interest.

They have already signed partnering deals with GE Healthcare for in vivo medical imaging applications as well as Syngenta AG
to develop asthma therapeutic. These partnerships are in addition to
their pre-IND PRS-050 candidate specifically designed to antagonize the
signaling of VEGF for the treatment of cancer.