TOKAI Corp. /9729/

September 18, 2017 (Last Updated: September 19, 2017 @ 8:30am PT) By Mark Terry , BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff Boston – LifeMine Therapeutics launched with a $55 million Series A round. It was led by WuXi Healthcare Ventures and an investor syndicate made up of Foresite Capital , GV (formerly Google Ventures ), Arch Ventures , Boyu Capital , Blue Pool Capital , MRL Ventures Fund , and Alexandria Venture Investments . LifeMine plans to combine genomics with artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to develop new drugs from eukaryotic microbes. The first focus—fungi. Gregory Verdine is the co-founder, president and chief executive officer. A venture partner at WuXi, he is also the Erving Professor at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School , and has founded numerous publicly-traded biotech companies including Variagenics , Enanta , Eleven Bio , Tokai , WAVE Life Sciences , Aileron , as well as private company Gloucester Pharmaceuticals which was acquired by Celgene in 2010. Verdine told Endpoints News ’ John Carroll, “Fungi have been duking it out with their neighbors in the soil for a billion years, stealing the lunch of their coworkers, competing, and fending off invaders using small molecules as competitive substances.” Which is a colorful way of saying fungi have come up with unique ways of killing competitors, whether its bacteria, viruses or other microbial predators, and the company is going to isolate some of those methods and see if they can be applied to disease therapeutics, such as cancer. He further told Carroll, his company will “grow up fungi individually, isolate DNA and sequence the DNA. Take the DNA and analyze it for biosynthetic gene clusters; an instruction set to make a natural product.” Verdine teamed up last year with co-founders WeiQing Zhou , entrepreneur-in-residence at WuXi Healthcare Venture and chief operationg officer at LifeMine, and Hingge Hsu , a senior advisor to WuXi. Together they raised $5 million in seed funding from WuXi Healthcare Ventures, and were then joined by Rick Klausner , the founder and director of Juno Therapeutics , GRAIL and Mindstrong as a co-founder leading up to the Series A round. The company’s board of directors will include Edward Hu , founding partner, WuXi Healthcare Ventures; James Tananbaum , founder and chief executive officer, Foresite Capital ; Krishna Yeshwant , general partner, GV; Yanling Cao , managing director, Boyhu Capital; and Klausner will be chairman. Verdine will also serve on the company’s board. “LifeMine has figured out how to tap into the power of evolution and accelerate the creation of new drugs that meet the greatest medical challenges of our day and those that have frustrated industry-wide attempts at solution,” Hu said in a statement. “LifeMine is building an exciting company with the potential to dramatically improve human health and well-being by mining fungi to discover drugs that hit difficult targets. We are proud to have worked with the founders to launch the company and the investor syndicate that came together in this financing round will continue to aggressively support LifeMine’s efforts.” The company claims it has “hacked a code of biologic function hidden in biosynthetic genes that enables the rapid discovery of drugs for previously untargetable disease drivers.”

February 23, 2017 By Mark Terry , BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff Harvard University chemical biologist Greg Verdine has an impressive resume. In addition to his academic pedigree, Verdine co-founded eight startups and two non-profit institutions. With university retirement coming in about three years, he’s not planning to settle in with a fishing pole and a cabin in the woods—he intends to head FogPharma , one of his startups, full-time. In 2015, Verdine and his business partner, Weiqing Zhoug , formed Fog and another company, LifeMine Therapeutics . Both companies work out of a lab in Cambridge, Mass. Fog has a $10 million Series A financing, and LifeMine has a $5 million seed round. Verdine is currently president of both companies. When he retires, the plan is to head FogPharma full-time and take on a less involved role at LifeMine. Zhou directs business development at Fog and is the chief operating officer of LifeMine. Probably the company Verdine is best known for is Warp Drive Bio . However, five of the eight startups went public—Variagenics, Enanta Pharmaceuticals , Tokai Pharmaceuticals , Eleven Biotherapeutics , and WaVe Life Sciences . Gloucester Pharmaceuticals was sold to Celgene . None have gone out of business, but Variagenics , Eleven Bio and Tokai merged with other companies. The two non-profit institutions are the Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute and the Gloucester Biotechnology Academy . FogPharma’s website doesn’t say much about the company, but an April 2016 Xconomy article indicated it was developing a new class of molecules called “cell penetrating mini proteins.” That sounds like miniature biologics, which are typically larger molecules. Verdine acknowledges that as an academic scientist, there was an enormous learning curve to running startups and he’s grateful for the support and patience his venture partners have provided over the years. Ben Fidler , writing for Xconomy says, “Verdine says he was ‘blissfully ignorant’ of the business aspects of biotech before heading up Warp Drive, and that he made his share of mistakes there. Without discussing specifics, he says academics running a lab tend to ‘hyper-delegate,’ whereas when running a business, you need to ‘own every single thing.’ He didn’t really know how a budget worked, or how to work with corporate attorneys to structure a company. He credits Third Rock and Sanofi , which along with Greylock Partners formed Warp Drive with an unusual alliance, for being willing to give him a chance to lead the company.” With some of those lessons in mind, he wants to take a slightly different approach with FogPharma. He notes that venture capitalists have a need for returns on their investments sooner than later, and this shorter timeline can put pressure on biotechs to make compromises on what they want to do. He mentions Eleven Bio as an example. It began as a protein engineering firm in 2010, but narrowed to an experimental eye drug. The tech platform was de-emphasized. The drug, isuankinra, allowed Eleven Bio to go public in 2014, but failed in clinical testing. As a result, the company merged with another company. “If the company didn’t need to achieve [a] liquidity [event],” Verdine told Fidler, “you might have really continued to put capital into the platform itself.” So, when the time comes to head FogPharma full-time, he plans to maintain “ferocious independence,” hold on to more equity and strategic control, and, presumably as a result, give himself and Fog longer runways to pursue both drugs and technology platforms. Fidler writes, “Fog is taking a more unusual path. It’s currently financed by an atypical mix of high-net-worth individuals anad institutions, and Verdine aims to keep the company very closely held and to control its strategic path.” Fog’s investors include WuXi Healthcare founding partner Ge Li ; Leerink Partners CEO Jeff Leerink ; former Pfizer and Biogen executive Robert Cawthorn ; the general partners of Boyu Capital , an investment firm in China; and William Poorvu , co-founder of The Baupost Group , a hedge fund. Deerfield Management and WuXi Pharmatech ’s corporate venture fund are also backing the company, but are not taking board seats.

September 16, 2014 By Riley McDermid , BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor It’s going to be a busy week for biotech initial public offerings (IPOs), with six major companies stepping into the limelight the week of Sept. 15. If all debut at their midpoint price ranges, the combined new market capitalization would be around $321 million value added on the NASDAQ , Check out BioSpace ’s handy guide and continuing coverage on what to expect this week! Scrappy Viking Therapeutics will roll out this week on the NASDAQ with a $55 million offering of 5 million shares at a price range of $10 to $12. At the midpoint price, Viking Therapeutics would weigh in at a market value of $167 million. The clinical-state biopharmaceutical firm develops therapies for metabolic and endocrine disorders, with lead product is VK0612 an orally-available drug candidate for type 2 diabetes. Its second product candidate is VK5211, an orally-available drug for the treatment of cancer. Phase 2 clinical trials are expected in early 2015 with projected completion dates in 2016, said Seeking Alpha. The San Diego, CA-based company has hired Oppenheimer and Roth Capital as bookrunners on the deal. Preclinical Dutch firm ProQR Therapeutics B.V. is hoping to take its venture capitalists backing all the way to the bank this week with a $75 million initial public offering of 6.3 million shares at a price range of $11 to $13. “). At the midpoint of the proposed range, ProQR Therapeutics would command a market value of $252 million,” estimated analysts at Renaissance Capital. VC shop Sofinnova has a 17.2 percent stake in the Leiden-based biotech, while investment firm Gilde owns 5.3 percent. Founded in 2012, ProQR develops drugs designed for the treatment of genetic disorders. It is currently working on a treatment for cystic fibrosis. The company employs 50 staff. Leerink Partners and Deutsche Bank Securities will act as the offering’s underwriters. Israeli biotech shop Foamix Pharmaceuticals will debut this week on the NASDAQ with a plan for raising $65 million by offering 6 million shares at a price range of $10 to $12. The Rehovot, Israel-based company develops topical foam treatments for moderate-to-severe acne. In a Phase 2 clinical trial, its product candidate for acne, FMX101, showed that it was a faster more effective treatment than oral minocycline for moderate-to-severe acne with fewer side effects. In a Phase 2 trial, its product candidate for impetigo, FMX102, had a 81.3 percent success rate after three days and a 100 percent success rate after 14 days compared to competitor Bactroban’s labeling of a 71 percent success rate after eight days and 96 percent after 12 days. The company plans to initiate Phase 3 clinicals for FMX101 for acne in 2015 as well as FMX102 for impetigo in 2H 2015. Lead underwriters are Barclays and Cowen & Company. Blood clot biotech firm rEVO Biologics is attempting another bite at the IPO apple after having been taken private once before in 2010. The company said it plans to raise $50 million as it begins its IPO listing on the NASDAQ under the symbol RBIO this week, offering 3.6 million shares at a price range of $13 to $15. The Framingham, Mass-based firm is developing a recombinant protein for the treatment of preeclampsia. rEVO Biologics, which was founded in 1993, booked $18 million in sales for the 12 months ended June 30, 2014. It which was originally formed as a subsidiary of Genzyme, completed an IPO in 2002 and was bought by French pharmaceutical company LFB Biotechnologies in 2010. Parent company LFB Biotechnologies said it will purchase $10 million worth of shares on the offering and invest $10 million in a concurrent private placement. Analysts at Renaissance Capital said, “At the midpoint of the proposed range, rEVO Biologics would command a market value of $261 million.” Guggenheim Securities and Piper Jaffray are joint advisers on the offering. Proceeds from IPO will fund the Phase 3 trial of Atryn, a treatment for blood clots during or after surgery or childbirth in patients with hereditary antithrombin deficiency (HD AT), to manage private equity, ramp up the sales effort and for general corporate purposes. Clinical-stage biofirm Tokai Pharmaceuticals plans to raise $75.6 million in its upcoming IPO, debuting this week with 5.4 million shares at an expected price range of $13-$15 per share. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based firm is developing a small molecule therapy for prostate cancer, a market Renaissance Capital said it puts in the $2+ billion range that will “grow substantially. Seeking Aplha said that, “If the IPO can find the midpoint of that range at $14 per share, TKAI will command a market value of $310 million.” Analysts have cautioned investors that the limited product diversity at Tokai remains a concern. However, the company has seen positive signs its drug candidate may be effective at treating patients with C-terminal loss, and plans to begin Phase 3 trials in the 1H15. The IPOs main underwriters are BMO Capital Markets Corp, Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc. and William Blair and Co. var switchTo5x=true; stLight.options({publisher: "0341611e-38a4-415d-9e18-75e093ff27e0", doNotHash: false, doNotCopy: false, hashAddressBar: false});