San Diego, California-based Jecure officially debuted on Wednesday, bringing a new platform and research approach to the silent epidemic of liver fibrosis and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (aka NASH) — a type of fatty liver disease.
Versant Ventures went all-in, independently funding the $20 million Series A with the last of its Fund V cash. (Fund VI closed earlier this year).
As far as startups go, the bet looks relatively safe. Jecure’s executive team is proven and familiar. CEO Jeffrey Stafford and CSO James Veal led the team at Quanticel Pharmaceuticals, a 2010 genomics startup hand-raised by Versant.
Celgene acquired Quanticel in April 2015 for $100 million and up to $385 million in milestone payments. After working through the transition, Stafford and Veal were on the lookout for a new project. An opportunity soon presented working with Ariel Feldstein, a professor of gastroenterology at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), an expert in liver fibrosis (scarring) and NASH.
Approximately five percent (15.9 million) of Americans are believed to have non-alcoholic steatohepatitis — but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. NASH is a progression of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which affects an estimated 75-100 million Americans.
The current gold standard for diagnosis is a liver biopsy, an invasive procedure that oftentimes can’t be justified when there are few options for treating the disease. For this reason, fatty liver disease and NASH are considered a “silent epidemic;” incredibly pervasive in the developed world but underrecognized.
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.
Based on Feldstein’s research at UCSD, Jecure is working on a portfolio of drugs as well as potential biomarkers to better diagnose and track the disease.
In a phone interview, Feldstein said the aim is to interfere with the development of the disease, differentiating Jecure from the bulk of companies targeting the early metabolic stages or late-stage liver fibrosis.
“Once you have this phenotype of NASH with the persistent cell death and inflammation, patients progress to a NASH fibrotic component and eventually develop the end-stage severe fibrosis,” he explained. “Where we are aiming is what we strongly believe is the sweet spot in the progression of the disease. The stage where there is a significant increase in intracellular injury, which brings the activation of an immune response.”
Following Feldstein’s work at UCSD, the team has isolated a protective, anti-inflammatory target, which he said has also demonstrated robust antifibrotic properties.
It’s all preclinical at this stage, but there are many avenues to explore according to the CEO.
“We have a couple of drug discovery programs that are in place and we’re moving those into in vivo efficacy studies as we speak,” Stafford said. “We hope to deliver out our first development candidate by the end of this year and file an IND by the end of next year.”
Tom Woiwode, a managing director at Versant and Jecure board member, stressed that Jecure would not be a semi-virtual company chasing one or two drug candidates. It will have a hands-on team of biologists that can further individual assets and the wider platform.
Stafford is keeping each option open.
“Based on our size and our initial trajectory, we will focus on the orphan and NASH settings of our drug,” Stafford said. “But there may be a broader opportunity.”
Versant has had several successful exits in the NASH/fibrosis field, which has a bolus of mid-stage companies but no FDA-approved therapies. Its 2005 startup Amira Pharmaceuticals was bought by Bristol-Myers Squibb for an upfront $325 million in 2011. Earlier this year Bird Rock Bio signed a collaboration deal with Johnson & Johnson for its NASH candidate. Versant led Bird Rock’s Series A.
Photo: Pakhnyushchyy, Getty Images
