Roche doubles down on Jnana's drug discovery platform, kicking off second deal with $50M cash — while biotech bags $107M
15 Nov 2022
Phase 1Breakthrough Therapy
Whatever Roche has learned about Jnana Therapeutics’ drug discovery platform over the past two years, it’s intrigued enough to set up a second partnership.
While the last deal had centered on solute carriers — or SLCs, the huge family of proteins that Jnana had built its name on — this time around, Roche wants to apply Jnana’s tech on a range of other hard-to-drug targets. The pharma giant will dish out $50 million upfront, plus “significant near-term milestone payments” and more than $2 billion in milestones.
Alongside the deal, Jnana is also taking the wraps off a $107 million Series C that will fuel its internal efforts — particularly the lead program, an oral treatment for the rare metabolic disease phenylketonuria (PKU) currently in Phase I.
Stuart Schreiber’s bid to tackle huge class of crucial proteins nabs another $50M
The broadened scope of the new Roche deal parallels Jnana’s own move to go beyond SLCs and use its chemoproteomics platform, dubbed RAPID, to find molecules that can hit targets like transcription factors and signaling scaffold proteins, said Joel Barrish, president and CSO.
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Source: Endpts
Stuart Schreiber
Barrish set out in 2017 with CEO Joanne Kotz and scientific co-founders Stuart Schreiber and Ramnik Xavier of the Broad to spotlight an unexplored protein territory by systematically studying over 400 SLC transporters. But since at least their last financing round in the summer of 2021, they’ve been hinting at how the platform has grown so powerful, it has the potential to drug virtually any protein.
“SLCs are a really diverse class of proteins and all kinds of structures, all kinds of — different numbers of transmembrane domains, and different pharmacology,” he said. “And what we were finding as we were running through the RAPID platform with different SLCs is that it was just consistently being able to find modulators of SLCs that had, again, all different structures, and all different pharmacology. Some of them were just involved in protein-protein interaction; some of them were involved in transport of key metabolites. And because of that, we thought, you know, let’s look at other proteins and other protein classes.”
Roche partners on a slate of Jnana's immunology, neurology targets, rewarding its faith in the SLC transporter class
As in their last deal — which came with $40 million cash and $1 billion in milestones — Roche and Jnana will be looking at targets in neurology and immunology. But they’re also adding oncology to the menu. Once the drugs pass preclinical tests, Roche is responsible for development and commercialization.
There’s still a number of SLC programs in the biotech’s internal pipeline as well, not least JNT-517, the PKU drug. Patients with PKU cannot break down phenylalanine, leading to dangerous buildup of the amino acid in blood and brain. The current standard of care, Barrish said, remains a strict low protein diet. JNT-517 is designed to block the SLC transporter SLC6A19, thereby inhibiting reabsorption of phenylalanine from the kidney back into the bloodstream.
Compared to biologics such as enzyme replacement or gene therapies, Barrish said that JNT-517 represents an oral option that can be given to anyone with few limitations, regardless of their genetic background, including children — who make up a significant portion of the patient population. The drug has also been granted the rare pediatric disease designation by the FDA.
Kotz added that the new round gives Jnana more than two years of runway, enough to bring the PKU program through Phase I clinical proof-of-concept and fund other drugs in immune-mediated diseases and cancer. Bain Capital Life Sciences led the round, and managing director Ron Renaud will be joining the board. Existing investors, including RA Capital Management, Polaris Partners, Versant Ventures, Avalon Ventures and Pfizer Ventures, also chipped in.
Ultimately, Kotz and Barrish hope their biotech can contribute to what they see as a renaissance of small molecule drugs, with the advent of new modalities such as protein degraders and molecular glues.
“As a small molecule chemist who has been involved in industry for about 40 years, it’s something I’ve always believed in,” Barrish said. “But, you know, there’s always waxing and waning of the strength of that belief, but I think that we’re back again. We’ve really shown how small molecules are just so, so important in terms of being able to go after targets that can be accessed by no biologics, cell therapy, and gene therapies, for example.”
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