Biotechnologies: the investment climate is favorable

Venture financing of biopharmaceutical startups does not stop, although with a smaller scale of cash injections

Yulia Streltsova, Mosmedpreparations

The participation of venture capital in the support of private biopharmaceutical companies in the first half of this year has reached the level when, at the end of the year, it will be comparable to the investment situation in 2016. However, the amount of investments and the number of investment rounds still decreased.

It is not yet clear whether this reflects linear regression, the absence of enterprises with mature assets, or the growing interest in companies with candidate drugs at early stages of development. One thing is clear: biotechnologies passed the boiling point in peak 2015, although the investment climate remains favorable.

In the first half of 2017, venture investors poured $4.5 billion into biopharmaceuticals, which, if projected, will be on par or slightly exceed the amount of $8.8 billion invested for the whole of 2016. Meanwhile, the average amount of attracted capital in a single investment round decreased from $24 to $22.9 million. The reason, perhaps, is the lack of an abundance of rounds for at least $ 50 million: in the first six months, only nine were held — last year their number was 47.

In 2016, there was an opinion that venture entrepreneurs prefer to do with less risks, therefore they avoid investing in companies with experimental drugs at the initial stages of development. Such firms require more modest financing in terms of tranches than those with relatively mature prototype medicines. Current indicators indicate that these trends are weakening.

However, it is impossible to draw sweeping conclusions yet: it is possible that there are no trends at all, and the picture being drawn is only the mood of individual investors. Some like established, syndicated enterprises, others like very young ones, but with great potential.

Again, the increased activity of companies entering the stock exchange indicates that if before the IPO procedure was considered by many biotech investors as an exit, in recent years there has been a shift: it began to be perceived by another round of financing. Investors seek to achieve either the sale of the business or the successful commercialization of candidate drugs.

In the second quarter, 90 rounds of financing were closed — this is one of the lowest figures in many years. Although the $2.2 billion collected is quite decent. There is no doubt that even if the strongest enthusiasm for fueling the biotech boom of 2015 is no longer observed, but the cash flow remains impressive.

Intarcia Therapeutics came out on top, persuading them to invest $475 million in it. By September, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will decide on a tiny implantable subcutaneous drug pump that continuously delivers the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonist exenatide, necessary for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. The project took ten years: we had to solve the problem with the formulation of exenatide so that the active substance, which is affected by body temperature, remained stable for at least a year, while maintaining the effectiveness of microdoses.

ITCA 650 is based on the Medici Drug Delivery System technology platform, characterized by three factors: the stability of the active substance for up to three years, the small size of the final device, and the convenience of implantation under the dermal layer of the skin. Image: Intarcia Therapeutics.

Rubius Therapeutics received the second position and $120 million. The money will be used to develop the proprietary Red-Cell Therapeutics technology for converting hematopoietic stem cells into red blood cells that express the specified biotherapeutic proteins. Since red blood cells are devoid of nuclei, the approach is seen as safer and more manageable in comparison with cellular or gene therapy. What is important, the upcoming drugs will be allogeneic, that is, they can be put on the flow of mass production.

Canadian "Ripea Therapeutics" (Repair Therapeutics) has raised $ 68 million for the development of a platform and a pipeline of drugs targeted at genetically predetermined weaknesses of cancer cells. The concept of synthetic lethality comes from the fact that the combination of certain mutations in the DNA of tumor cells can lead to the destruction of the latter, which means that it is necessary to find and inhibit such targets (for example, DNA repair mechanisms), the suppression of which will trigger the destruction process. Examples of the effectiveness of such approaches are poly inhibitors(ADP-ribose)-polymerases (PARP) targeting BRCA1 and BRCA2 tumor mutations.

The Chinese "Kansino Biologics" (CanSino Biologics) collected $ 65 million. Ten experimental vaccines aimed at Ebola virus, tuberculosis, pneumococcal and meningococcal infections, and whooping cough are on the conveyor belt of the enterprise.

The Irish "Iterum Therapeutics" (Iterum Therapeutics) has invested $ 65 million, which will be used to bring to mind sulopenem (sulopenem) — an oral and intravenous antibiotic designed to treat gram-negative multi-resistant infections.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  18.07.2017