“Practice of medicine could fundamentally change with these types of therapies,” said CEO Jaideep Dudani, whose start-up raised $120 million in Series A funding.
Ouro Medicines, a new biotechnology start-up, launched Friday with $120 million in funding to develop antibody drugs for chronic inflammatory conditions.
Ouro plans to use so-called T cell engagers to rebalance the immune systems of people with autoimmune diseases. The company’s top prospect, licensed from China-based Keymed Biosciences, will begin clinical testing this year. It’s also working on newer T cell engagers and other programs probing “unique subsets” of the malfunctioning B cells implicated in several immune conditions, according to a statement.
The startup was formed by Monograph Capital and GSK, both of which participated in its financing alongside co-leaders NEA and TPG Life Sciences Innovations as well as a few others. The company is led by Jaideep Dudani, a portfolio principal at Monograph and part of the founding team of Hi-Bio, an immune drug start-up Biogen acquired last year.
Ouro is the latest company looking to capitalize on evidence suggesting T cell engagers could treat autoimmune conditions in ways other drugs can’t.
Since research from Germany showed cellular medicines can drive diseases like lupus into lengthy remissions — in the process freeing patients from chronic immunosuppressive drugs — biotech investors, start-ups and pharmaceutical companies alike have taken notice. More than a dozen clinical trials testing cell therapies have started in recent years.
Joining them in testing now are T cell engagers: dual-targeting antibody drugs touted by proponents as a more practical alternative.
T cell engagers can eliminate B cells, as cell therapies do. But they’re easier to manufacture, don’t require chemotherapy conditioning and can be administered via infusion multiple times. Some published case reports, as well as clinical data reported at a medical meeting last year, have indicated the approach holds promise in autoimmune disease.
“This could be potentially just a completely new way to treat autoimmune patients,” said Dudani, in an interview. “Practice of medicine could fundamentally change with these types of therapies.”
Though it’s unclear how effective T cell engagers will prove, they and other multipurpose antibody drugs have drawn a flurry of investment. GSK and Merck & Co. acquired prospects in deals last year. Publicly traded biotech Cullinan Therapeutics changed course to support a similar program, while an investor group poured $370 million into Candid Therapeutics, a start-up built around T cell engagers for autoimmune disease. Others are advancing experimental medicines as well. (At least one company, IGM Biosciences, has hit a setback in this quest, however.)
Ouro is now part of that group. Like Candid, it starts with a drug licensed from a China-based biotech company and originally tested in cancer. Dubbed OM336, the drug targets BCMA, a protein expressed on a variety of B cell subtypes, Ouro noted in its statement. Keymed has been testing it in a Phase 2 trial in multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer where multiple BCMA-targeting agents are approved. Ouro, which acquired rights outside of China, views it as promising for a variety of B cell-mediated diseases such as lupus, scleroderma and rheumatoid arthritis.
Dudani says the drug’s preclinical data, as well as clinical results to date, suggest it could be more potent and safer than other BCMA-targeting drugs. Human testing in autoimmune conditions hasn’t yet begun, however, and Dudani acknowledged there remain important questions for Ouro and its peers to answer, such as how high of a dose immune disease patients should receive and how frequently they need to be treated.
The company will start Phase 1 trials in multiple autoimmune conditions this year and expects to generate results before seeking further funding. Dudani wouldn’t provide additional details.
“We certainly have pretty lofty and large aspirations,” he said. “If we can prove OM336 can put people into remission without the need for ongoing immunosuppression, there will be an appetite for additional investment.”