Third Rock Ventures is launching a startup geared at broadly treating hearing loss – leading a $52 million Series A for freshly christened Decibel Therapeutics.
The Boston company is developing drugs that can be directly injected into the inner ear. They have multiple modalities – with candidates being developed in the antibody, small molecule and siRNA spaces. SR One also participated in the round.
“Our approach at Decibel is to really consolidate all the learnings in the field, and build an industrial-scale approach,” CEO Kevin Starr said in a phone interview. “That’s why our A round was $52 million – we’ll need very, very heavy lab efforts.”
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
Indeed, Third Rock companies generally take this broad scale approach to their respective fields – take Bluebird Bio’s approach to gene therapy, or Constellation Pharmaceuticals’ approach to epigenetics.
Starr, a cofounder at Third Rock, said that Decibel is developing a direct injection to avoid systemic exposure. The company was conceptualized three years ago, but is now ramping up. It just launched its new lab, it’s designing animal experiments and proprietary compounds, and plans to hire 50 to 60 people in the next 18 months.
“We believe we can be in the clinic within the first three years,” Starr said. “Our internal goal is to beat that.”
The hearing loss market, Starr said said, is one of the largest untapped markets in pharma – with 360 million people globally suffering from hearing disorders.
“Hearing loss can range from minor issues – involving losing small levels of high frequency hearing from prolonged noise exposure – to very severe – resulting in close to total deafness as a long-term side effect of chemotherapy or aminoglycoside treatments,” Starr said.
Another company in the hearing loss space, Otonomy, launched with an antibiotic that treats infections in the inner ear, but is similarly diversifying its pipeline.
Hearing loss has long been attributed to the reduction of functionality of the hair cells in the cochlea. The founders of Decibel, however, have found that the synapses inside the ear are often also at fault in hearing loss. So, with this new understanding of the circuitry of hearing, Decibel has a threefold approach to developing its line of drugs:
1) Protecting children on chemotherapeutics, or those with cystic fibrosis taking immunoglycosides. These are both regimens that cause hearing loss, and Decibel is developing a prophylactic approach.
2) Going after the synapse apparatus, which is often impacted in noise-induced hearing loss. The idea is to potentially administer an antibody after an injury that can restore functional hearing.
3) Chasing the patient population that use cochlear implants to improve hearing – because it’s thus far an inadequate solution. The idea here is to develop a therapeutic that has a direct impact on neuronal growth – modulating the circuitry to protect and restore synapses.
The research comes from a number of top hearing loss experts, including Harvard Medical School’s M. Charles Liberman, University of Michigan’s Gabriel Corfas, Ulrich Müller of Scripps Research Institute and Albert Edge of Massachusetts Eye and Ear.
“There are really no therapeutic approaches today to hearing loss,” Starr said. “Hearing loss is one of these great untapped frontiers. What we’re excited about at Third Rock is the science has now elucidated approaches that allow us to make an impact on hundreds of millions of patients.”
[Image courtesy of Flicker user Bear Park]
