BioPharma, Startups

Orchard Therapeutics closes $150 million Series C round

The oversubscribed round comes just four months after acquisition of GSK's gene therapy portfolio.

A company developing gene therapies for rare disorders has raised a large round of financing only months after it purchased a portfolio of therapy candidates from British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline.

Orchard Therapeutics said Monday that it had raised $150 million in an oversubscribed Series C funding round. Deerfield Management led the round, while RA Capital Management, Venrock, Foresite Capital, Perceptive Advisors, Cormorant Asset Management, ArrowMark Partners, Sphera Global Healthcare, Medison Ventures, Driehaus Capital Management and Ghost Tree Capital Group, along with other healthcare-focused investors in the US. Existing investors that participated included Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Temasek, along with Baillie Gifford, RTW Investments, Cowen Healthcare Investments and Agent Capital. The company previously raised a $110 million Series B round in December 2017, co-led by Baillie Gifford and ORI Capital.

The company plans to use the money to advance its three leading clinical programs, namely OTL-101 for adenosine deaminase severe combined immunodeficiency, also known as ADA-SCID; OTL-200 for metachromatic leukodystrophy, or MLD; and OTL-103 for Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, or WAS. All three therapies are in registration-directed trials, according to Orchard’s pipeline page. Orchard has offices in London, Boston and San Francisco.

In April, Orchard took over GSK’s rare disease gene therapy portfolio, which included the already approved ADA-SCID gene therapy Strimvelis, which the European Medicines Agency had approved in May 2016 for patients who have the disease but are unable to find a suitable stem cell donor. The WAS and MLD programs were also part of the transaction, though OTL-101 was developed in-house. ADA-SCID is one of several forms of SCID, also known as “bubble boy syndrome.” All types of SCID are rare, affecting no more than 1-in-100,000 births and being more common in people with Navajo, Apache or Turkish ancestry, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders.

Strimvelis consists of autologous, CD34-positive stem cells that are transduced with a retroviral vector to express adenosine deaminase. In exchange for the acquisition, GSK took a 19.9 percent equity stake in Orchard and a seat on its board. Other, earlier-stage medicines were also included in the deal.

Photo: Getty Images

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