Two years af­ter se­cur­ing seed fund­ing and re­main­ing in a state of “se­mi-stealth,” a San Fran­cis­co biotech keen on com­bin­ing evo­lu­tion and small mol­e­cule dis­cov­ery re­cent­ly bagged a VC round that will let it do just that.

Known as An­a­genex, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Wednes­day that it raised a $30 mil­lion Se­ries A round, se­cur­ing the at­ten­tion of Catalio Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment as lead in­vestor. A few oth­er in­vestors tagged along, such as Lux Cap­i­tal and Khosla Ven­tures.

Lux Cap­i­tal had led An­a­genex’s seed round back in 2020, which net­ted the biotech $7.2 mil­lion. Ac­cord­ing to An­a­genex CEO Nico­las Tilmans, the round should last the biotech at least two years.

An­a­genex said in a state­ment that it plans to use its Se­ries A funds to “fur­ther ex­pand its nov­el da­ta gen­er­at­ing plat­form and build a ro­bust pipeline of pro­grams ad­dress­ing his­tor­i­cal­ly chal­leng­ing un­met med­ical needs.”

Tilmans start­ed off by telling End­points News that in his mind, the force of evo­lu­tion is one of the strongest forces in na­ture.

“And if you can cre­ate a sys­tem that har­ness­es evo­lu­tion, you will al­most al­ways do bet­ter in bi­ol­o­gy than oth­er­wise,” added the CEO, who has a PhD in bio­chem­istry out of Stan­ford.

The biotech got off the ground in 2018, af­ter Tilmans said he saw this evo­lu­tion­ary con­cept in both an­ti­body and pro­tein-based drug dis­cov­ery. So he won­dered, why not ap­ply this in small mol­e­cules? From his per­spec­tive, the im­ped­i­ment had been a lack of ways to “close the loop.”

The CEO com­pared it to sub­ject­ing finch­es to evo­lu­tion­ary pres­sures and see­ing which finch­es make it through. As they re­pop­u­late over time, one could cre­ate the per­fect finch — a sim­i­lar the­o­ry posit­ed by Charles Dar­win with his finch­es.

Ac­cord­ing to An­a­genex, the plat­form now gives way to a closed loop that can be re­fined again and again, mak­ing for a di­rect­ed evo­lu­tion process, in Tilmans’ words.

Af­ter tak­ing an ini­tial li­brary of po­ten­tial com­pounds (any­where from a cou­ple hun­dred mil­lion to more than a bil­lion) and screen­ing them to see if they bind to a cer­tain tar­get, re­sults are fed in­to the biotech’s ma­chine learn­ing plat­form. Then, that plat­form cre­ates a nar­rowed li­brary of 1 mil­lion of more “promis­ing” com­pounds based on the re­sults of the pre­vi­ous screen. The re­fined com­pound li­brary gets screened again as re­sults are re-fed in­to the ma­chine learn­ing plat­form, and it spits out an­oth­er nar­row com­pound li­brary to be fur­ther re­fined.

The com­pa­ny will be­gin with syn­thet­ic lethal on­col­o­gy, with An­a­genex al­so tak­ing a look at cer­tain in­flam­ma­tion and car­dio­vas­cu­lar tar­gets. So far, there are three pro­grams in play: two in syn­thet­ic lethal on­col­o­gy and one in car­dio­vas­cu­lar.

Tilmans said he can see small mol­e­cules branch out in­to mul­ti­ple in­di­ca­tions akin to Keytru­da or Hu­mi­ra, which are both an­ti­bod­ies — and that is their goal.

“We don’t have the lux­u­ry of Pfiz­er. So yes, any­thing we pick, we’d like to be able to have it go in­to mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent in­di­ca­tions. But the most im­por­tant thing for us is to take a prob­lem that we’re pret­ty sure we’re gonna win. And we’re pret­ty sure that the mar­ket at the oth­er end is go­ing to be big enough,” the CEO added.

In terms of part­ner­ships, Tilmans said that there are a few on­go­ing con­ver­sa­tions, but he claims his ap­proach to part­ner­ships is marked­ly dif­fer­ent from oth­er biotech CEOs.

I want to em­pha­size that we are a ther­a­peu­tics com­pa­ny, and we want to be solv­ing prob­lems and then bring­ing the fruits of our la­bor to the pa­tient, our­selves. So that’s a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent than some of the oth­er com­pa­nies in the space. One of the ways I like to think about it is sort of like Wall Street newslet­ters. If you’re telling me what things to in­vest in, maybe you should in­vest in them, and put your mon­ey where your mouth is. And that’s the way we see drug dis­cov­ery.

An­a­genex cur­rent­ly has about 18 em­ploy­ees, and plans to reach 30 with­in the next 18 months or so.

In the mean­time, An­a­genex’s board gets two new mem­bers as part of the raise: Catalio co-founder and part­ner George Petrochei­los as a di­rec­tor and Catalio an­a­lyst Matthew Hob­son as an ob­serv­er.

Just as scientific innovation is essential to advancing health, systemic healthcare innovation is required to tackle health disparities. Factors outside of science – such as racism, discrimination, and lack of access to quality health care – create barriers that prevent some people from benefiting from hard-won scientific advancements. Innovation must go beyond science to address disparities in cancer care.

The last few decades have been years of amazing progress in how we approach cancer care: emphasizing regular screenings, early diagnoses and treatment with targeted therapies that are helping many patients live longer and healthier than ever before. We in the oncology community are proud of the hope we’ve brought to people facing this disease. However, the pandemic brought to light how health disparities can set us back from achieving our ultimate goal of eliminating cancer as a cause of death.

The new GSK has a new look. In a blend of familiar and modern, its vibrant orange brand color remains, while the now three letter-only name has been reimagined in a curvy contemporary logo update.

While the logo is the most visible change, the new GSK brand debuting Thursday is more than just a makeover. It’s a wholesale change for the 300-year-old company that, for the first time in its history, is no longer in the consumer healthcare business. The biopharma-only GSK has adopted a new purpose “to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together” as well as a new strategy, ambitions and revamped brand identity.

Emma Walmsley’s bet on making GSK a pure play Big Pharma innovator just cleared a major milestone. But the GSK team is not home free yet.

The global player announced that its adult RSV vaccine cleared a Phase III trial — AReSVi 006 — offering “exceptional protection” to 25,000 enrollees over the age of 60, setting up a planned rollout with regulators. But while GSK cheered this as a clear success, and a landmark first, it’s keeping the key figure on efficacy in preventing severe infections under wraps for now, leaving the next big question of how this will look to regulators and industry rivals still unanswered.

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For the second straight day, the FDA’s Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapies adcomm voted unanimously in favor of FDA approving a bluebird bio gene therapy, this time by a 13-0 vote in favor of beti-cel as a potential treatment for a blood disorder known as β-thalassemia for those who require regular blood transfusions.

The second straight unanimous thumbs up opens the potential for two FDA approvals later this summer for bluebird — although the agency on Friday raised some manufacturing concerns for both therapies.

The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, or NICE, on Friday agreed to cover Amarin’s controversial cholesterol drug Vascepa, amidst turbulence for Amarin.

Amarin and NICE agreed to a price of £144.21 per 120 soft capsules (or $181 for 30-day supply), according to Amarin. Low-price generic versions of Vascepa, known as icosapent ethyl, cost about $100 in the US, according to GoodRx.

It’s clear from #ASCO22 that biopharma audiences are back, live, at the big conferences. That’s encouraging, as we return to more face-to-face meetings to advance the work at hand. But go behind the busy center stage, and you’ll see plenty of worrying signs that biotech — though not Big Pharma — is in for a rough ride. And just when it ends is anyone’s guess right now.

Sentiment is one thing, data another. And there’s no denying that the numbers have changed dramatically. We asked DealForma chief Chris Dokomajilar to crunch the numbers a little bit early for H1, in order to get a look at the trends in play here during a watershed year for the biotech industry.

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Paul Hastings doesn’t offer the usual biotech executive cliches. The ones endorsed by the media consultant crowd. And sometimes the Nkarta CEO doesn’t even wait for a question before jumping straight to his answers, his truth, as he likes to call it. And that was the way we started our conversation about his first year as chair of BIO, and how the next year is shaping up. Hastings will join our panel on managing a biotech during turbulent times, which will be available in a live setting in San Diego, or online. You can register for that — along with a lineup of virtual events — here. — John Carroll

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Back at the beginning of the year during JP Morgan, I came up with my usual set of projections for the year ahead and definitely got one thing wrong. The biotech IPO market, I said in January, would remain weak, creating a major funding issue for biotech.

Here’s me in a discussion with Catalent executive chairman John Chiminski:

What you’ve had for several years is a booming biotech field, lots of money pummeling into the business and pushing it up. So when you remove IPOs as an alternative source of money for a lot of companies, it will make deal-making more (attractive).

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Bioscience & Technology Business Center The University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas

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