Heads certainly turn when the biggest pharmas all vie for equity in a newly spawned immuno-oncology upstart: The field is, after all, one of biotech’s hottest these days. Cambridge immunotherapy startup Surface Oncology just closed a hefty $35 million Series A round, and it’s collecting from the venture arms of some major players – like Eli Lilly, Amgen and Novartis.
The funding will help Surface Oncology advance a broad pipeline into clinical development this year, it said in a statement.
So what makes Surface Oncology all about? Well, a standard immunotherapy approach involves blocking specific the immune checkpoint pathways that help cancer cells proliferate. But this approach, Surface Oncology says, is limited in the types of cancers it treats and the patients who respond.
Surface Oncology works on checkpoint inhibitors that play a role in letting cancer cells evade the immune system. Its preclinical therapies improve the efficacy of antigen presentation, the company says – blocking suppressor cell activity in the tumor microenvironment. In essence, the approach allows immunotherapy concepts to work in broader strokes.
Venture capitalist Bruce Booth just penned this in Forbes:
Another day, another announcement about great data from immuno-oncology. It’s clearly one of the hottest fields in biopharma today, and has been for a few years. The opening paragraph of a recent Leerink report by Seamus Fernandez and team on I/O is a great summary of the field today:
Others may complain about ‘IO fatigue’ but we can’t?get enough of it. Biopharma companies are changing the way we treat cancer by unleashing the immune system, achieving functional cures?in several of the most deadly cancers. The breadth, durability, and tolerability of PD1/PDL1 antibodies demonstrated over the last three years should establish this class as the backbone of a new pillar of cancer care, immuno-oncology.
The current wave of late stage therapeutics represent a $40B-plus market opportunity (again according to Leerink), with significant portfolios at Novartis, BMS, Merck, Amgen, AZ, and others. We and other venture firms have been quite active in the space.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The round was led by Atlas Venture, which seeded the upstart last year. Other investors include Fidelity Biosciences, Lilly Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Amgen Ventures, Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research – as well as individual investor Elliott Sigal, the former R&D head at Bristol Myers Squib.
