Eikon Therapeutics, Inc.

iStock, leolintang BioSpace has been compiling a list of the most innovative and exciting biotechs for a decade. Here we take a look back at noteworthy companies from each of those lists. 2024 marked the 10th year of BioSpace ’s NextGen list, a collection of biotechs that are on the cutting edge and poised to break barriers in the industry. As we prep next year’s list, to be released in January, we decided to take a look back at a notable honoree from each of our past lists. There were many fascinating companies that have gone on to great things; on the other hand, sometimes things don’t go as well as we predicted. We have a few not-so-great stories to tell, too. ___________________________________________ 2024 ReNAgade Therapeutics Status: Bought by Orna Therapeutics This company made our list for a pretty big reason: a massive $300 million series A in one of the toughest financing environments in recent memory. The company was launched in May 2023 to develop RNA medicines to treat diseases anywhere in the body. One of the lead investors in the round was MPM BioImpact, whose managing partner Ansbert Gadicke founded ReNAgade. Early in the biotech’s history as a stealth company, there was a bit of foreshadowing as to where the company would end up. ReNAgade struck up a partnership with Orna Therapeutics, which was also working on RNA therapeutics. The work attracted the attention of Merck in a deal worth up to $3.5 billion with development and commercialization milestones. Given the money on the line, Orna went all in on ReNAgade, buying out the biotech in May of this year—almost a year to the day after its launch. Financial details were not disclosed. See the full class of 2024 . ___________________________________________ 2023 Mariana Oncology Status: Bought by Novartis What a year 2023 turned out to be for Mariana Oncology. After raising a $175 million series B in September of that year, the company was bought out by Novartis for $1 billion , plus $750 million in milestones. Originally known as Curie Therapeutics, Mariana emerged from stealth with a $75 series A raise in December 2021 to develop new radiopharmaceuticals. The company caught our eye and made the 2023 list, but apparently Novartis was keeping an eye too. The radiopharmaceutical-hungry Big Pharma said at the time of the deal that Mariana’s technology would help it double down in the field of radioligand therapeutics. On a recent earnings call, Novartis executives expressed their excitement in the Mariana technology, saying that candidates from the buyout are speeding toward the clinic and could go after well-established antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) targets. See the full class of 2023 . ___________________________________________ 2022 Eikon Therapeutics Status: Operating Eikon has spent the two years since landing on our list racking up cash and poaching executives from CEO Rodger Perlmutter’s former employer Merck. The biotech’s raises have been huge in a really tough market: a $148 million series A in May 2021, $518 million for a January 2022 series B and most recently, $106 million in series C financing in June 2023 . At the most recent raise, Eikon also announced the acquisition of a clinical pipeline. The company now boasts oncology assets in Phase I and II testing for non-small cell lung cancer and melanoma, respectively. The rest of Eikon’s pipeline is in preclinical research or discovery. See the full class of 2022 . ___________________________________________ 2021 EQRx Status: Bought by Revolution Medicines, assets terminated EQRx emerged with a lofty goal we could all get behind: develop drugs at a lower cost. It raised a cool $200 million in a July 2020 series A, then caught the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) wave to the Nasdaq just over a year later, adding $1.8 billion in an August 2021 IPO. The company was helmed at first by serial biotech entrepreneur Alexis Borisy. Trouble emerged shortly thereafter, with EQRx cutting lead asset sugemalimab for NSCLC after determining it had no path to market. The company shifted to two other assets, aumolertinib and lerociclib, but later dropped the former. Several rounds of layoffs made the company ever smaller before EQRx finally gave up entirely. The assets were terminated as Revolution Medicines bought out the company and its hefty $1 billion bank account. Borisy has since gone on to start a venture capital firm called Curie.Bio . See the full class of 2021 . ___________________________________________ 2020 Cerevel Therapeutics Status: Bought by AbbVie Cerevel as a company is no more, but its medicines live on at AbbVie, which bought the biotech for $8.7 billion in December 2023. The deal was part of a trend of neuroscience-focused biotechs being bought up by Big Pharma, with Cerevel moving in the same month as Bristol Myers Squibb bought Karuna Therapeutics for $14 billion. BMS was rewarded quickly with a recent FDA approval for KarXT (now Cobenfy) for schizophrenia, but AbbVie too has had success since sealing the deal. Cerevel’s investigational Parkinson’s disease therapy tavapadon improved control of motor symptoms when used with common treatment levodopa in a Phase III trial that read out in April. The data would support a regulatory filing for the therapy, executives said at the time. Two additional late-stage readouts for the therapy are due later this year. But the real star of the deal was emraclidine, which is in Phase III studies for schizophrenia. Cerevel also brought a major depression treatment to the table. “These assets clearly will be great additions to our neuroscience franchise,” said AbbVie’s CEO Rob Michael on the company’s second quarter earnings call. See the full class of 2020 . ___________________________________________ 2019 Genevant Status: Operating One of Roivant’s offshoots, Genevant is still operating today, working on developing nucleic acid delivery technology. Just last week, Genevant signed a deal with CRISPR gene editing company Editas Medicines to develop in vivo gene editing medicines for two undisclosed targets. Genevant has also recently signed deals with Novo Nordisk, Tome Biosciences, Gritstone bio and Repair Biotechnologies. But perhaps the most compelling story from Genevant since we named them to our NextGen list has been their litigation with famed biotech Moderna over the lipid nanoparticle delivery system used for its approved COVID-19 vaccine. Genevant and Arbutus Biopharma filed several patent infringement claims against Moderna arguing that the vaccine developer used their technology without license or proper compensation. A judge sided with Arbutus and Genevant in April, with a trial set for next year. See the full class of 2019 . ___________________________________________ 2018 BlueRock Therapeutics Status: Bought by Bayer Bayer bought cell therapy biotech BlueRock Therapeutics in August 2019 for $1 billion, but rather than absorbing the company into itself, the German pharma kept the name and unit operating. This unusual but refreshing strategy means that the company essentially lives on. In June 2023, BlueRock reported that Parkinson’s disease stem cell therapy bemdaneprocel was well tolerated with no significant side effects in a Phase I trial with 12 patients. It was the first cell therapy to show positive results in human testing, Bayer said at the time. A September update showed similar safety results. The therapy has since received a regenerative medicine advanced therapy tag from the FDA. Elsewhere in the pipeline, BlueRock’s investigational iPSC-derived cell therapy OpCT-001 for certain retinal disorders was cleared for human testing in September. The therapy was licensed from FUJIFILM Cellular Dynamics and Opsis Therapeutics. See the full class of 2018 . ___________________________________________ 2017 Decibel Therapeutics Status: Bought by Regeneron Regeneron made a splash at this year’s American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy meeting in Baltimore when it showcased results of a Phase I/II trial of hearing loss therapy DB-OTO. The therapy restored hearing in two children who had a genetic form of hearing loss. While Regeneron’s branding was behind the conference presentation, the gene therapy came from Decibel Therapeutics. Regeneron bought the biotech for $109 million in August 2023, at which point the two companies had already been working together for six years. The biotech was integrated into Regeneron’s genetic medicines portfolio. See the full class of 2017 . ___________________________________________ 2016 CRISPR Therapeutics Status: Operating CRISPR Therapeutics made history last year as the first company, along with partner Vertex Pharmaceuticals, to gain an FDA approval for a CRISPR-based gene edited therapy. The companies were granted an FDA greenlight for Casgevy in sickle cell disease. The same day, bluebird bio got a similar nod for a competing gene therapy, though not one that involves CRISPR technology. The FDA approval was a triumph of modern biotechnology. But the roll out has been slow given the nature of gene therapy treatment, and only recently have patients begun receiving infusions of the medicine. Casgevy is now also approved for beta thalassemia, another blood disorder. The company has turned to the rest of its pipeline, including a CD19-directed CAR T cell program called CTX112, which is being tested in both cancer and autoimmune disorders. CTX131 is in development for hematological malignancies as well. CEO Sam Kulkarni has expressed confidence in CRISPR’s leading position in gene editing and pledged to be on top of emerging technologies. “One of the most important considerations for us is that we don’t get disrupted,” he said at the Goldman Sachs healthcare conference in June. “We are the leaders in the gene editing space and we have been, but we want to make sure that we’re looking at every improvement that’s coming out there.” See the full class of 2016 . ___________________________________________ 2015 Spark Therapeutics Status: Bought by Roche Like BlueRock, Spark Therapeutics was folded into a Big Pharma but kept its identity. Spark earned a spot on our very first NextGen list in 2015 thanks to its active clinical hemophilia program and fundraises totaling $122.8 million. The company caught the eye of Roche, which swooped in with a $4.8 billion bid in February 2019. The deal eventually turned into a bit of a boondoggle, with regulatory delays slowing things down until it finally closed that December. At issue was Roche’s hemophilia Hemlibra. Regulators worried that Spark’s hemophilia program and Hemlibra together could stifle competition and create a monopoly. Spark brought with it the approved eye disease gene therapy Luxturna. With the deal closed, Spark has charged forward under the Roche banner. The unit is developing a 500,000-square foot Gene Therapy Innovation Center in Philadelphia as its flagship manufacturing space. See the full class of 2015 .

Oral presentation to highlight safety and preliminary efficacy of EIK1001 in combination with pembrolizumab Separate poster presentations will highlight EIK1001 both in combination with pembrolizumab and chemotherapy (trial in progress) and safety and preliminary efficacy in combination with atezolizumab A Phase 1 study of the PARP1-selective inhibitor, EIK1003, will be highlighted in a poster presentation (trial in progress) HAYWARD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Eikon Therapeutics, Inc., a pioneering biotechnology company that leverages advanced engineering to enhance drug discovery and development, announced today that multiple abstracts highlighting its clinical-stage TLR 7/8 co-agonist (EIK1001) and PARP1-selective inhibitor (EIK1003) programs will be presented at the 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, being held in Chicago May 31 – June 4, 2024. The oral presentation (Abstract: 2521) highlights safety and preliminary efficacy data from a clinical study (NCT03486301) of EIK1001, a Toll-like receptor 7/8 (TLR7/8) co-agonist, in combination with pembrolizumab in participants with advanced solid tumors. The new data show that EIK1001 was well-tolerated with a manageable safety profile, and showed encouraging preliminary efficacy across several tumor types in combination with pembrolizumab. Responses were observed even in heavily pretreated patients not anticipated to respond to pembrolizumab monotherapy. Anthony W. Tolcher, MD, FASCO, of New Experimental Therapeutics (NEXT), will deliver the presentation on June 2, 2024 at 12:42 PM CDT. “We are encouraged by the promising data emerging from our lead clinical programs,” said Roy D. Baynes, MB.BCh., Ph.D., Chief Medical Officer of Eikon Therapeutics. “The safety and preliminary efficacy results for EIK1001, in combination with pembrolizumab and with atezolizumab, underscore the potential of these promising approaches. We highlight also the advancement of EIK1001 into front-line combinations with standard-of-care pembrolizumab and chemotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer, and of our PARP1-selective inhibitor, EIK1003, into phase 1 studies in cancers selected for specific genotypes.” In addition, three posters will be presented and include: Title: A first-in-human (FIH), phase 1/2, dose-escalation, dose-optimization, and dose-expansion study of PARP1-selective inhibitor EIK1003 (IMP1734) in participants with advanced solid tumors. Abstract Number: TPS3191 (Poster Bd# 320b) Abstract Session: Developmental Therapeutics—Molecularly Targeted Agents and Tumor Biology Date/Time: June 1, 2024, 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM CDT Presenter: Guru Sonpavde, MD, Medical Director of Genitourinary Oncology, Assistant Director of the Clinical Research Unit and Christopher K. Glanz Chair for Bladder Cancer Research, AdventHealth Cancer Institute. Title: Safety and preliminary efficacy of EIK1001 in combination with atezolizumab in participants with advanced solid tumors. Abstract Number: 2618 (Poster Bd# 97) Abstract Session: Developmental Therapeutics—Immunotherapy Date/Time: June 1, 2024, 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM CDT Presenter: Manish Patel, MD, Director of Drug Development, Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute/Sarah Cannon Research Institute. Title: A phase 2 study of EIK1001, a Toll-like receptor 7/8 (TLR7/8) agonist, in combination with pembrolizumab and chemotherapy in patients with stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer. Abstract Number: TPS8667 (Poster Bd# 521b) Abstract Session: Lung Cancer—Non-Small Cell Metastatic Date/Time: June 3, 2024, 1:30 PM – 4:30 PM CDT Presenter: Dan Costin, MD, FACP, Director, White Plains Hospital, Center for Cancer Care. Eikon will also host a booth in the exhibition hall (#32116) at the 2024 ASCO Annual Meeting. About Eikon Therapeutics Eikon Therapeutics seeks to advance breakthrough therapeutics through the purposeful integration of engineering and science. Our proprietary discovery technologies leverage Nobel Prize-winning super-resolution microscopy, advanced engineering, and high-performance computing to visualize and measure the real-time movement of proteins in living cells, with the goal of bringing important new medicines to people suffering from grievous illness. Eikon operates from its facilities in California, New Jersey, and New York and can be found online at or LinkedIn.

– Financing will support development of a foundational machine learning model of medicinal chemistry that can accurately predict small molecule drug candidates for any protein – – Releases unprecedented dataset publicly to address critical challenges in drug discovery with machine learning – SALT LAKE CITY, April 05, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Leash Biosciences, an artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML)-native biotechnology company unleashing machine learning to solve medicinal chemistry, today announced the completion of a $9.3 million seed financing round to advance its mission of revolutionizing medicinal chemistry through modern computational methods and massive biological data collection. The oversubscribed round was led by Springtide Ventures with participation from MetaPlanet, Top Harvest Capital, Mitsui Global Investment, MFV Partners, Recursion CEO and co-founder Chris Gibson, and Recursion co-founder Blake Borgeson. Leash aims to develop a foundational and generalizable machine learning model of medicinal chemistry that can accurately predict small molecule drug candidates for any protein in silico, and more broadly, interactions between any protein and any chemical. To achieve this, Leash is producing bespoke, expansive datasets of protein targets binding to chemicals. To date, the Company has physically generated over 17 billion high-quality protein-chemical interaction measurements. In its new Salt Lake City headquarters, Leash plans to screen 500+ protein targets against many millions of machine learning-designed, proprietary chemicals by 2025. “ML improvements in chess, Go, image recognition, language translation, text generation, and protein folding all were driven by the collection and curation of massive datasets. We believe a similar strategy will revolutionize how we approach medicinal chemistry," said Ian Quigley, CEO of Leash Biosciences. "We are thrilled to have the support of this group of top-tier investors who share our vision for transforming drug discovery through an ML-first approach." To advance its machine learning engine, Leash will use the funding to scale its data collection and computational capabilities. The Company’s ML engine will also support advancing multiple internal therapeutics programs toward in vivo studies. "Leash's platform stands apart with its combined excellence in machine learning, experimental biology, and medicinal chemistry," said Claire Smith, Lead Investor at Springtide Ventures. "We are excited to back this exceptional team as they leverage cutting-edge tech to tackle the toughest drug discovery challenges." Alexey Morgunov of MetaPlanet added, "Leash sits at the forefront of innovating the next paradigm of AI-driven, scalable, and rapid drug design. We are honored to partner with them as thought leaders in this space." The Leash team is comprised of TechBio veterans with expertise spanning AI/ML, biology, and chemistry. Five of the company's six employees are former Recursion employees with experience building and scaling transformational drug discovery platforms. The team also brings experience from Eikon Therapeutics, Myriad Genetics, insitro Biosciences, LinkedIn, Stripe, and other leading technology and biotechnology players. In parallel, Leash announced the launch of its inaugural machine learning Kaggle competition, the Big Encoded Library for Chemical Assessment (BELKA). Leveraging a dataset of unprecedented scale, BELKA sets out to address one of the most critical challenges in drug discovery: predicting the likelihood of chemical materials binding to pharmaceutically-relevant targets. The competition will be hosted on the Kaggle platform, the world’s largest data science community. "By providing participants with access to such a comprehensive dataset, we are empowering the global scientific community to develop innovative solutions that could revolutionize the way we identify potential drug candidates,” said Ian Quigley, Leash Bio CEO. About the Kaggle Competition: Predict New Medicines with BELKA (Big Encoded Library for Chemical Assessment) BELKA aims to contribute to groundbreaking advancements in predictive modeling for pharmaceutical research by harnessing the capabilities of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Participants will be tasked with analyzing a vast dataset comprised of 133 million physically-measured activities for each of three key protein targets. Leash rigorously produced a dataset that exceeds all existing small molecule binding datasets combined. With 133 million molecules screened against each protein and evaluated with deep sequencing coverage and many replicates, participants will have access to an unparalleled wealth of data in scale and depth. Importantly, this competition dataset is larger than the world’s largest existing drug-target dataset (PubChem), providing a unique opportunity for groundbreaking insights and discoveries. It represents a small fraction of Leash’s screening data. Committed to transparency and collaboration in scientific research, Leash plans to publicly release the full dataset of all conditions and replicates aggregated for the contest dataset, some 3.6 billion physically-measured interactions, at the conclusion of the competition. This resulting collection, expected to be released in the summer of 2024, will be approximately 10 times larger than the largest publicly available dataset to date and 1,000 times larger than higher-quality, curated public datasets, providing researchers worldwide with an invaluable resource for future drug discovery efforts. The BELKA competition is open for registration and concludes on July 8, 2024. For more information, including participation criteria and registration, visit the competition page on Kaggle. About Leash Leash Biosciences is a biotechnology company unleashing machine learning to solve medicinal chemistry, with headquarters in Salt Lake City, UT. Powered by a team of experts, Leash aims to expand the boundaries of what’s possible in drug discovery. Through the combination of leading-edge machine learning and large-scale chemical and biological datasets, Leash aims to rapidly design novel small molecule therapeutics. For more information, visit and follow on LinkedIn. Leash Contact Info Becca Levin, PhD Head of Business Development & Strategy becca@leash.bio