Even after nearly three decades at Gilead Sciences, watching the company grow from fewer than two dozen employees about 10,000, Norbert Bischofberger still felt young.
Bischofberger, who joined Gilead in 1990 and until April was executive vice president for research and development at Foster City, California-based Gilead, was appointed last month as president and CEO of Kronos Bio. In an interview, he said that after witnessing Gilead develop, he wanted to work at a startup company.
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.
Kronos, based in New York with research and development operations in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is employing high-throughput screens of chemical libraries against target proteins and has so far drawn up potential drug candidates including an androgen receptor antagonist, a MYC inhibitor and a CDK9 inhibitor. That technology was developed over the course of a decade by Massachusetts Institute of Technology biological engineering professor Angela Koehler, Kronos’ scientific founder. “While we can lay the framework in an academic setting, the speed with which progress can be made with the right team of commercial scientists is greatly accelerated. This next stage of development will uncover the real therapeutic potential of this research for patients,” Koehler said in a statement.
The conservative estimate is that the company would choose an initial candidate for clinical development by early 2019, followed by investigational new drug (IND)-enabling preclinical studies and finally a clinical trial beginning around the end of 2019, Bischofberger said. The most likely candidate is the androgen receptor antagonist, a class that is used to treat prostate cancer. Other androgen receptor antagonists on the market include Xtandi (enzalutamide), marketed by Pfizer and Astellas, and Janssen’s Zytiga (abiraterone).
The company has raised $18 million in seed funding, which means the company will likely need to raise more money in a Series A round in early to mid-2019, particularly if the androgen receptor antagonist shows promise, Bischofberger said. If the company does not move a candidate into IND-enabling studies, then the seed money could last until almost the end of 2019, he said, adding that those studies will cost $3-4 million.
The seed round was led by Omega Funds, BellCo Capital, Vida Ventures, Bischofberger and John Martin, with additional participation by Arie Belldegrun. Belldegrun was founder of Kite Pharma, the CAR-T company that Gilead bought last year for $11.9 billion and whose therapy, Yescarta, was approved last year for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. BellCo Capital is run by Belldegrun’s wife, Rebecka Belldegrun, who will join the company’s board, along with Martin, while Arie Belldegrun will become board chairman.
Photo: Olivier Le Moal, Getty Images
