Immune drug developer Apogee emerges as first spinout of biotech Paragon
07 Dec 2022
Drug startup Apogee Therapeutics emerged on Wednesday with $169 million in funding to develop new medicines for immunological and inflammatory disorders.
The company is the product of the Waltham, Massachusetts-based biotechnology firm Paragon Therapeutics, which spun out Apogee to advance drug candidates it’s discovered. Apogee’s public launch follows the closing of a $149 million Series B round of funding from Deep Track Capital, RTW Investments and half a dozen other venture investors.
“It’s a novel antibody that targets a clinically validated biological pathway and well-established development roadmap,” Apogee’s CEO, Michael Henderson, said in an email to BioPharma Dive.
The company says it has four candidates in its pipeline and plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration for permission to begin human testing of at least one each year through the next three years. It plans to share more information on its development plans next year.
Apogee benefits from a partnership with Paragon, which specializes in biologic medicines and has a flexible approach to R&D that could involve more spinouts in the future.
“We are going to go where the science takes us, but we do expect to spin out more companies in the future,” said K. Evan Thompson, Paragon’s chief operating officer, in an email to BioPharma Dive.
Paragon might also develop drugs on its own or in partnership with other pharmaceutical companies, as is typical in the industry.
Thompson indicated Paragon sees spinning out focused biotechs as a way to get medicines into clinical trials and to patients faster.
Paragon isn’t the only company open to doing so. In gene therapy, Replay Therapeutics is following a similar route with what it calls a “hub-and-spoke” approach. Replay currently plans to spin out five companies, each focused on a different therapeutic area.
Star Therapeutics is doing much the same, launching Electra Therapeutics and Vega Therapeutics this year.
Apogee’s Henderson even has some experience with this model, having previously served as chief business officer at BridgeBio Pharma, which has launched a number of affiliate drug companies.
Paragon was founded in 2021 by Fairmount Funds Management as a joint venture with FairJourney Biologics.
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