New biotech from Alex­is Borisy will test Mer­ck KGaA, Blue­print can­cer drug com­bo in bid to ful­fill Gleevec promise

02 Aug 2022
endpts.com
Best in Class
Alex­is Borisy and Ben Aus­pitz want to be in­tel­li­gent with their lat­est biotech, not “stu­pid.”
That’s in the words of Borisy, the re­peat biotech en­tre­pre­neur be­hind the likes of Blue­print Med­i­cines and EQRx. He and busi­ness part­ner Aus­pitz, a long-time in­dus­try in­vestor at F-Prime Cap­i­tal, want to bring to­geth­er “in­tel­li­gent­ly de­signed” can­cer drugs, hence their start­up’s name: IDRx.
New biotech from Alex­is Borisy will test Mer­ck KGaA, Blue­print can­cer drug com­bo in bid to ful­fill Gleevec promise
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Source: Endpts
Ben Aus­pitz
In launch­ing their lat­est biotech, with a $122 mil­lion Se­ries A, the duo be­lieves it’s brought to­geth­er two drugs that can be “best in class” as a com­bi­na­tion ther­a­py for cer­tain can­cers. At the heart of their new com­pa­ny is an old ven­ture: Blue­print. IDRx has se­cured the li­cense to a Blue­print as­set and a Mer­ck KGaA as­set, with both com­pa­nies re­tain­ing eq­ui­ty stakes in the start­up in ex­change for the trans­fer.
An­dreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Cas­din Cap­i­tal led the fi­nanc­ing, which in­clud­ed back­ing from Nex­tech In­vest, Forge Life Sci­ence Part­ners and oth­er undis­closed in­vestors. Blue­print se­cured a 15% eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment and can re­ceive up to $217.5 mil­lion in mile­stone and tiered per­cent­age roy­al­ties, the com­pa­ny said Tues­day in its quar­ter­ly earn­ings.
Over a con­ver­sa­tion around Borisy’s firepit, the two dis­cussed what would be­come IDRx, the duo told End­points News. Borisy had been talk­ing with Har­vard med­ical pro­fes­sor George Demetri and Gleevec dis­cov­er­er Nicholas Ly­don about a Mer­ck KGaA mol­e­cule that could be promis­ing in treat­ing KIT-dri­ven gas­troin­testi­nal stro­mal tu­mors, or GIST.
But the trio won­dered what could hap­pen if they brought it to­geth­er with an­oth­er mol­e­cule, with the Mer­ck one serv­ing as a base, Borisy said. They pre­sent­ed the idea to Blue­print, who in turn said they were in­trigued and had the right mol­e­cule for the sec­ond half of the com­bo. But Blue­print had a lot al­ready on its plate with a bur­geon­ing pipeline, so even­tu­al­ly the idea turned in­to a new com­pa­ny, Borisy said.
Fast for­ward to to­day, IDRx is now in the clin­ic with the Mer­ck KGaA as­set, dubbed IDRX-42, and the ex-Blue­print as­set, IDRX-73, is head­ed to­ward the clin­ic.
The first one will be test­ed as a sin­gle agent to serve as the base, and then the Se­ries A funds will bankroll a com­bo study, the ex­ec­u­tives said, in the hopes of prov­ing out their hy­poth­e­sis. The Ply­mouth, MA biotech is work­ing nim­bly with few­er than 10 em­ploy­ees.
Aus­pitz serves as CEO. Round­ing out the lead­er­ship team is de­vel­op­ment op­er­a­tions chief Jes­si­ca Chris­to, prod­uct de­vel­op­ment chief Vic Kadambi, VP of reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs Shrenik De­sai and VP of clin­i­cal op­er­a­tions Deb­bie John­son.
IDRx’s vi­sion is built around the com­bo ther­a­py route be­cause pre­ci­sion med­i­cines might be ef­fec­tive on their own, but on­ly for a year or slight­ly more, Borisy said. The biotech wants to de­liv­er a decade or more of sur­vival for pa­tients. To paint a pic­ture, Borisy says to think of No­var­tis’ Gleevec sto­ry of the ear­ly 2000s.
“Why are not all drugs like Gleevec in CML (chron­ic myel­oge­nous leukemia), right? Gleevec has trans­formed CML from a dis­ease you died from to a dis­ease you died with, right? That was the promise of pre­ci­sion med­i­cine,” Borisy said. Ly­don has won in­ter­na­tion­al awards for his work help­ing dis­cov­er Gleevec.
So, IDRx wants to “hit the core dri­ver very hard,” do the same against by­pass re­sis­tance mech­a­nisms and treat pa­tients ear­li­er in dis­ease.
The com­bi­na­tion they found, via the Mer­ck and Blue­print as­sets, is what they dub an in­tel­li­gent­ly de­signed one. In years past, ro­bot­ic high through­put em­pir­i­cal test­ing would go through more than a thou­sand drugs to drum up a mil­lion pos­si­ble com­bi­na­tions, Borisy ex­plained.
“That’s a bit of a brute force, stu­pid-type of em­pir­i­cal ap­proach, which is why it may be a lit­tle sort of self-ref­er­en­tial­ly or mak­ing fun of our­selves. We said, ‘Well, this time, it’s ra­tio­nal, right, as op­posed to just brute force. This time it’s in­tel­li­gent­ly de­signed,'” he mused.
With the fi­nanc­ing in hand, it’s time for clin­i­cal stud­ies to test that hy­poth­e­sis.
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