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Axial invests and partners in early-stage life sciences companies. If you or someone you know has a great idea or company in life sciences, Axial would be excited to get to know you and possibly invest in your vision and company — info@axialsprawl.com
Life Sciences Financings and Commentary #1 - March 28, 2020 - April 3, 2020
Financings
Number of deals: 27 & Total capital invested: $1.25B
- Activaid raised ¥100M led by Archetype Ventures and Genesia Ventures. The company is pretty neat - they created a social network for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). It seems they have almost built a digital patient advocacy group. If they can play their cards right, maybe they can play a large role in IBD drug development and maybe even help fund new programs.
- Affinia Therapeutics raised $60M with F-Prime Capital and NEA co-leading the round. The business is focused on AAV design similar to Regenxbio. Affinia is focused on developing AAV gene therapies for muscle and CNS diseases - https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/03/31/2009133/0/en/Affinia-Therapeutics-Raises-60M-in-Series-A-Financing-to-Advance-Rational-Design-AAV-Platform-and-Transformative-Gene-Therapies.html
- Air Doctor raised $7.8M co-led by Kamet Ventures and The Phoenix Insurance Company co-led the round. The company connects people traveling to local doctors. Does insurance pay for this care out-of-network? I doubt it. It’s a interesting product to build out to move toward global medicine - https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/30/air-doctor/
- Akouos raised $105M led by Pivotal bioVenture Partners. The company develops gene therapies for hearing disorders. The money is going to be used to commercialize their AAV product to restore hearing by delivering a new copy of the OTOF gene - https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/akouos-nabs-meaty-105m-raise-adds-vc-and-biotech-veterans-to-board
- AM-Pharma raised €47M led by Cowen Healthcare Investments. The company is using the capital to push through a pivotal trial for a new medicine going after sepsis-associated acute kidney injury. They are targeting a phosphatase called recAP. In general, kidney disease is such a huge opportunity with many approved medicines not being good enough - https://endpts.com/undeterred-by-pandemic-disruptions-cowen-backs-am-pharmas-176m-pivotal-plan-around-lethal-condition/
- AristaMD raised $18M co-led by Cigna Ventures and MemorialCare Innovation Fund. The core value prop of the company is to speed up the transition from primary to specialty care. The company builds up a network of specialists to help clinicians figure out who the best referral to - https://www.aristamd.com/specialist-panel/ This could be a really great business as long as they incentivize the primary care physician properly. There are issues around breaking into large payor networks.
- Aspen Neuroscience raised $70M led by OrbiMed. The company is working on an autologous iPSC-based therapy for Parkinson’s Disease (PD) to restore neuronal function. The business model trick here is to focus on familial PD with a variant in the glucocerebrosidase (GBA) gene - this patient population has less than 200K people and is going to allow Aspen get Orphan Designation by the FDA to get to the clinic faster and do a more effective trial.
- Bright.md raised $8M co-led by B Capital and Seven Peaks Ventures. The company’s core product is called SmartExam relying on asynchronous telemedicine. The key differentiator is that the product doesn’t require video. They can do this because Bright.md focuses on low-acuity injuries like back pain. So the main value prop is to quickly help patients get care and scalably empower physicians to deliver care. Getting rid of video seems to be the core insight to scale up telemedicine for injuries that don’t require immediate responses.
- Doctor Anywhere raised $27M led by Square Peg, EDBI and IHH Healthcare. The produce is a video telemedicine product to speed up prescription and medication delivery to the home (in Singapore) - https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/garage/telemedicine-startup-doctor-anywhere-bags-us27m-in-series-b-round
- Dynacure raised €50M led by Perceptive Advisors. The company is focused on myotubular and centronuclear myopathies using the capital to initiate a Phase I/II trial for an antisense medicine targeting DNM2.
- Dyne Therapeutics raised an undisclosed amount of capital from CureDuchenne Ventures. The company is focused on delivery new medicines to cure Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) - https://www.dyne-tx.com/dyne-therapeutics-announces-equity-investment-from-cureduchenne-ventures-to-support-pioneering-approach-to-restoring-muscle-health-in-dmd/
- ElevateBio raised $170M from The Invus Group, Surveyor Capital, EDBI, and Vertex Ventures along with others. ElevateBio is building a really exciting business model - the company is bringing some part of BridgeBio to cell and gene therapies.
- iTeos Therapeutics raised $125M co-led by RA Capital Management and Boxer Capital. The company is focused on developing immunotherapies against two relatively new targets: A2A and TIGIT. An important program is developing a medicine to act in conjunction with Keytruda from Merck.
- MedGenome raised $55M led by LeapFrog Investments. The business is focused on bringing next-generation sequencing and single-cell technologies to Asia for population genetics and immuno-oncology - https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/leapfrog-medgenome-182533/
- Neuritek Therapeutics raised €25M from a fund managed by Global Emerging Markets to develop new medicines for PTSD - https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/neuritek-therapeutics-secures-25-million-eur-capital-commitment-from-the-gem-group-for-development-of-next-generation-treatments-for-posttraumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd-301031257.html
- Olive raised $51M led by General Catalyst. The business model is pretty interesting, almost taking UiPath’s approach to healthcare, by bringing robotic process automation technologies to problems like benefits, vendor authorization, and billing.
- One Three Biotech raised $2.5M co-led by Primary Venture Partners and Meridian Street Capital focused on building an AI-platform to develop rare disease drugs.
- OrthoSpin raised $5M led by Johnson & Johnson Innovation. With an FDA-cleared product, the company is working on commercializing a production that externally fixates a limb to ensure an orthopedicians recommendations are followed. They have a long road to get market uptake and payments, but it seems the product increases compliance rates - https://www.trendlines.com/company/orthospin/
- Pandion Therapeutics raised $80M co-led by Access Biotechnology and Boxer Capital. The company is focused on developing new medicines for ulcerative colitis with next steps for Type 1 diabetes and autoimmunity in general. The premise is to build antibodies that go after certain cytokines to treat the disease without general immunosuppression - https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/pandion-therapeutics-scores-80m-to-drive-autoimmune-programs-through-clinic
- PatientPay raised $6.2M led by Mosaik Partners. The product looks like a straightforward billing software for healthcare providers. The key metric here is collection rates; not sure how they solve this problem uniquely.
- RemeGen raised $100M with Lilly Asia Ventures and Lake Bleu Capital co-leading the round. The company is developing new biologics medicines in China - https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/remegen-completes-usd-100-million-plus-in-funding-301034166.html
- ReCode Therapeutics raised $80M co-led by Colt Ventures and OrbiMed. The company is developing mRNA therapeutics relying on non-viral lipid nanoparticles to treat primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) and nonsense mutations in cystic fibrosis (CF) - https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/recode-therapeutics-nets-80m-to-push-rna-treatment-for-cystic-fibrosis
- Shanghai ZhenGe Biotechnology raised $51M led by Lyfe Capital. The company is a contract development and manufacturing (CDMO) for biologics.
- Sitryx Therapeutics raised $10M with Eli Lilly investing. The company is focused on immunometabolism to treat cancer.
- SteadyMD raised $6M co-led by Pelion Venture Partners and Next Ventures. The company is building a telemedicine primary care product.
- SutroVax raised $110M co-led by RA Capital Management and Janus Henderson Investors. The company licensed the Xpress cell-free platform from Sutro Biopharma to create a vaccine for pneumonia (entering Phase I) hopefully with better coverage than the rival (and approved) Pfizer vaccine - https://endpts.com/sutrovax-lands-another-100m-in-upstart-quest-against-pfizers-blockbuster-prevnar-13/
- Zucara Therapeutics raised $21M led by Perceptive Xontogeny Venture Fund to make a medicine for diabetic hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) prevention.
Exits
Number of exits: 3 & Total exit value: ~$5.8B
- Keros Therapeutics filed to go public on the NASDAQ at a valuation around $300M. The largest shareholders with Pontifax, Arkin Holdings, and Foresite Capital respectively. The company’s lead program, KER-050, is a ligand trap with a TGF-β liganding-binding domain fused to a Fc domain with phase II trials in myelodysplastic syndrome and myelofibrosis. The mechanism is to increase red blood cell and platelet production by TGF-β inhibition - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1664710/000119312520074978/d855212ds1.htm
- WeDoctor filed to go public in Hong Kong seeking to raise $500M-$1B with a private valuation of $5B. The company is a large online healthcare service business involved in everything from bookings to insurance. Think WeChat for healthcare - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/wedoctor-is-said-to-pick-jpmorgan-credit-suisse-cmb-for-ipo
- Zentalis Pharmaceuticals went public on the NASDAQ with a valuation around $500M. The company focuses on developing small molecules for cancer with three clinical candidates in breast cancer (partnered with Pfizer), solid tumors, and NSCLC (partnered with SciClone) - https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center/News/67865/Oncology-biotech-Zentalis-Pharmaceuticals-sets-terms-for-$130-million-IPO-s
I used to play football a long time ago - I had some decent success mainly because of my teammates with some of them playing in the NFL. Every practice, every game was an existential fight. I’m not that athletic so every year some 6’4 monster would show up trying to take my spot. Similarly, all of these companies are fighting for their right to exist whether they raised $1M or $100M. Building a great business requires passion and focus. A really powerful and useful framework to lead groups of people and win was developed by Bill Walsh -