Pharma, Startups

Aro Biotherapeutics draws $13M in startup investment to target centyrin proteins

The company currently has a product candidate in the late-discovery phase, an EGFR-targeting drug for lung cancer that would go after a resistance mechanism against existing kinase inhibitors.

By Alaric DeArment on December 12, 2018

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A company looking to develop drugs that target a kind of protein has raised more than $10 million in startup capital from one of the world’s largest drugmakers.

Philadelphia-based Aro Biotherapeutics said Tuesday that it raised $13 million, having been established through an initial startup investment from Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC and Cleveland-based startup accelerator BioMotiv.

Aro’s technology is based on centyrin protein therapeutics, which co-founder Karyn O’Neil and her team at Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies discovered. The other co-founder of the company is CEO Sue Dillon, who like O’Neil was a research and development leader at Janssen. “Centyrins were conceived with the aim of simplifying the complexities of antibodies,” Dillon said in a statement. “This has enabled Aro scientists to rapidly create bi- and multi-specific centyrins that are simultaneously optimized for potent anti-tumor actiity and for efficient manufacture in E. coli.”

The company describes centyrins as small, structurally simple, ultra-stable and highly soluble proteins. In December 2016, O’Neil and colleagues at Janssen published a paper in the journal Protein Engineering, Design & Selection that used a centyrin binding to EGFR to create a delivery platform using the proteins. O’Neil is currently an editor for the journal, according to the company.

According to Aro’s pipeline page, the lead product candidate is an EGFR-targeting bispecific centyrin, currently in the lead optimization phase of discovery for non-small cell lung cancer. The compound works by targeting the cMET receptor and EGFR and is based on the premise that although numerous EGFR-targeting tyrosine kinase inhibitors are available and used to treat NSCLC, all patients eventually regress due to additional mutations one one or more genes. Mutations in the cMET pathway have been identified as an important mechanism of resistance to anti-EGFR kinase inhibitors.

Also on Tuesday, venture capital firm Versant Ventures launched Black Diamond Therapeutics, which is going after allosteric mutations, including of EGFR, which are by default resistant to earlier kinase inhibitors and even some monoclonal antibodies.