The news this week that a young Southern Californian start-up has raised $18M in VC funding may not seem that much of an event in the
greater scheme of things. Considering,
however, that it concerns an RNAi Therapeutics platform technology, the
investment by VenBio and Aeris in Solstice Biologics deserves our full
attention. In fact, it suggests that the
RNAissance (Take 2) has finally worked its way through the biotech investment food
chain.
Investment suggests Big Pharma appetite for RNAi
Therapeutics
After Roche announced that I would leave the field a little more than two years ago, RNAi
Therapeutics platform plays were shunned by the VC community as untouchable
outcasts. More so than the knock it gave
on the confidence about the technology, the Roche exit, and following that related
moves by other Big Pharmas, was interpreted as if Big Pharma demand for the RNAi
Therapeutics platform was gone forever.
As Big Pharma interest is critical to platform plays because it provides
them with critical access to capital through technology licensing and perhaps
even an exit, the perceived lack thereof dried out VC funding for RNAi
Therapeutics.
Looking at the people behind VenBio, one would have to think
that they did their due diligence on this important matter such as by talking to Big
Pharma about RNAi Theraspeutics directly. Corey Goodman for example is a well
known, well-connected drug hunter and biotech entrepreneur who in 2007, as the
President of Pfizer’s Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation Center
And yes, the renewed confidence may not come all that surprising given the clinical results that the field has produced over the last year, but it's very encouraging to see it come from VCs.
Technology behind Solstice
Unsurprisingly, the investment at issue is aimed at developing RNAi
delivery technology, currently the main driver of platform value. The idea here is to add to the RNAi trigger chemistries
that reversibly mask their negative charge so as to facilitate cell entry. Once in the cytosol of cells, enzymes chew off the
masking chemistries to reveal the RNAi trigger.
The idea is not entirely new. In the antisense field, morpholinos take a
similar approach to traversing the cell membranes in a neutral/slightly positive charge state. In RNAi Therapeutics, Merck according to their partnering website is actively soliciting for such technology solutions. If I may say so, the idea has
even crossed my mind and probably means that everybody else had
similar ideas even before that.
I would therefore have to believe that either the charm of
or the particular solution by the inventor Steve Dowdy (who also happens to be
the scientific founder of just-bankrupt Dicer dsRBD RNAi delivery company TaversaTherapeutics) has particular promise in the eyes of the investors. I’ve only had time to skim through the patent
applications, esp. WO 2010/141471, so I do not want to speculate too much about
the prospect of the technology by Solstice (shameless advertisement: I can
always be had for due diligence, of course).
Take the survey on the top right-hand side: Which Big Pharma company will make the first significant RNAi Therapeutics move in 2013? Merck, Novartis, Takeda, Pfizer, or Company X?
