Ribon Therapeutics has emerged out of stealth after three years of developing a lead asset targeting cancer based on research at MIT, UT Southwestern and Harvard Medical School.
The world is less than a week into 2019 and already universities are proving they have every intention of building and expanding on the historic successes of the past 12 months – stay tuned for the annual data review in this month’s magazine.
There is Friday’s acquisition of CoreBiome, a US-based genomic and informatics technology spinout of University of Michigan by point-of-care diagnostics devices manufacturer OraSure Technologies, less than 18 months after the spinout’s formation.
There is Cabaletta Bio, a US-based spinout of University of Pennsylvania, which raised $50m in series B funding last week to bring its total to $88m as it continues development of therapies for autoimmune diseases.
But more intriguing still is the emergence of Ribon Therapeutics, a US-based biotechnology company developing enzyme families activated under cellular stress conditions, which came out of stealth on Friday with $65m in series B capital provided by a consortium led by Novartis Venture Fund, the corporate venturing division of pharmaceutical firm Novartis.
Spinout-focused investment firm Osage University Partners also contributed, as did JJDC and Takeda Ventures, respective corporate venturing subsidiaries of healthcare group Johnson & Johnson and pharmaceutical company Takeda, as well as biotechnology firm Celgene.
Column Group, Deerfield Management, US Venture Partners and Euclidean Capital also contributed to the series B round.
Regulatory filings show Ribon had secured $23.5m in 2016 and $20m in October 2017, putting its overall funding at more than $108m. Novartis Venture Fund, JJDC and Celgene were all identified as returning investors for the series B round, though further details could not be confirmed.
Founded in 2015, Ribon Therapeutics is working on treatments initially focused on cancer but with the additional potential to treat inflammatory diseases and neurodegenerative diseases. It targets the regulators of cellular stress pathways activated by cancer cells, which use these pathways to counteract cellular stress such as the accumulation of DNA damage.
The company’s lead asset is focused on Parp7 inhibitors for squamous cell lung cancer, which affects the inside of the airways in the lungs and can spread to other areas, including the brain, spine and other bones, adrenal glands and the liver. The inhibitors remove cancer cells’ ability to evade immune detection and repair themselves.
Heike Keilhack, vice-president of biological sciences, said of the approach: “Parp7 inhibitors represent a novel approach to treating cancer because they act on the tumour in two ways – directly inhibiting tumour proliferation, and shutting down the don’t-kill-me signal the tumour is sending to evade the immune system.”
The approach is not entirely new but remains early-stage, with pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca securing regulatory approval in the US for the first Parp inhibitor, Lynparza, aimed at certain types – covering approximately 10% to 15% – of ovarian cancers in 2014. The approval followed a significant setback for the technology in 2011 when drug developer Sanofi’s treatment for breast cancer failed a late-stage clinical trial.
If Ribon’s lead asset and pipeline prove successful, it could turn Parp inhibitors into a much more viable treatment for conditions including cancer. It would particularly benefit patients faced with limited treatment options.
And while it may be early days for Ribon’s treatments, the company is building on research from not one but three internationally renowned institutions – Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Centre and Harvard University’s Harvard Medical School. The calibre of investors – most importantly the multiple healthcare corporates – only reinforce the fact that Ribon is a force to be reckoned with.
The co-founders and scientific advisers include Paul Chang, who was an assistant professor in MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research until he left in 2015 to be vice-president of discovery biology at Ribon – though he stepped down from that position in 2017.
Chang collaborated with Lee Kraus, professor of obstetrics, gynaecology and pharmacology at UT, and Timothy Mitchison, the Hasib Sabbagh professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School.
Anja Koenig, head of Novartis Venture Fund, will join Ribon’s board of directors alongside an unnamed member of JJDC’s team.
Koenig said: “We have been following [president and chief executive] Victoria Richon and her team for more than a year and are impressed by Ribon’s tremendous progress and ability to execute.
“Ribon has developed a novel platform with the flexibility and rigour to investigate and exploit new targets providing the opportunity to build a diverse and attractive pipeline of first-in-class therapeutics.”
