NEWS ROOM

BIND Biosciences featured in Bioworld Today

01/14/2010

More Financings as JPM Rolls on: BIND Gets $11M Series C

By Trista Morrison and Catherine Hollingsworth Staff Writers

SAN FRANCISCO – Attendees at the 28th annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference looked distinctly less bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Wednesday morning, after a night of cocktail receptions and business dinners. But they still managed to fill the streets of Union Square, bustling back and forth between meetings.

Companies, venture capitalists and public company investors alike have reported full schedules of “productive” meetings, and everyone is hopeful that this year will be better than last. Yet the conference has been quiet in terms of breaking news, particularly compared to years past.

Last year during the conference, ZymoGenetics Inc. signed a $1.1 billion hepatitis C deal with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Santaris Pharma AS inked an $847 million miRNA deal with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, The Medicines Co. acquired antibiotic maker Targanta Therapeutics Corp., Micromet Inc. teamed up with Bayer Schering AG in a $400 million cancer BiTE antibody deal, cancer start-up Forma Therapeutics Inc. burst on the scene with a $200 million Novartis Option Fund deal, and much more. (See BioWorld Today, Jan. 13, 2009, and Jan. 14, 2009.)

This year, however, Galapagos NV’s discovery partner­ship with F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. – worth a potential $579.6 million but only $8.7 million up front – was the biggest deal. KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc. also signed a $290 million deal with Sanofi Pasteur for an anti-infective antibody. (See BioWorld Today, Jan. 12, 2010, and Jan. 13, 2010.)

There were also a handful of small financings, but the biggest of those came from private companies, like Toll-like receptor player VentiRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., which topped off its Series A round with $25 million. (See BioWorld Today, Jan. 12, 2010.)

Another financing is expected to be announced Thurs­day by BIND Biosciences Inc. The Cambridge, Mass.-based firm, which has been busy making the rounds on the J.P. Mor­gan meeting circuit all week, raised $11 million in a Series C round to advance its nanoparticle pipeline into the clinic.

BIND is among a handful of U.S. companies that are working to encapsulate drugs into targeted particles in an attempt to deliver them more effectively to the disease site. Its lead program, BIND-014, which is designed to deliver the cancer drug docetaxel more effectively, is set to enter clin­ical development in the second half of 2010.

In the area of nanoparticle delivery, few targeted nanoparticle drug candidates have reached the clinic. “So we intend to change that very quickly” newly appointed BIND CEO Scott Minick told BioWorld Today.

Cambridge, Mass.-based Cerulean Pharma Inc. (for­merly Tempo Pharmaceuticals) raised $10 million last year to push its nanoparticle candidate into the clinic and to advance its platform technologies. Cerulean picked up rights to a cyclodextrin co-polymer-based drug delivery technology, including Phase I-stage cancer program IT-101, from Pasadena, Calif.-based Calando Pharmaceuticals Inc. Cerulean plans to develop that delivery platform in con­junction with its own nanoparticle Nanocells-based tech­nology, and hopes to wrap up the Phase I trial by early 2010. (See BioWorld Today, July 28, 2009.)  

Within the broader scope of nanomedicine, there are more advanced products in development such as lipo­somes. The liposome-encased chemotherapy drug Doxil (doxorubicin liposomal), which is sold by Ortho Biotech Products LP, is used to treat AIDS-related Kaposi’s sarcoma, breast cancer, ovarian cancer and other solid tumors.

The fatty liposome that encloses Doxil is designed to avoid detection by the body’s immune system as it travels to the tumor cells. It was developed by Sequus Pharmaceu­ticals, where Minick severed in executive positions, before the company was acquired by ALZA Corp.

Minick explained that BIND’s lead particle is designed to get a much higher concentration – tenfold and even as much as a hundredfold increase of the drug to the tumor than could otherwise be achieved, sparing the normal tis­sue from toxicity. One way the drug accomplishes that, he said, is by targeting the new vasculature (blood vessels) that the tumor attracts in addition to targeting the tumor cell surface proteins. BIND believes its approach to optimizing a drug may hold an advantage, because the company has the ability to run parallel experiments to come up with an optimal design for each drug and each disease, all of which can be done in a matter of months. “I don’t know how you could run all those experiments with another technology,” Minick said.

The company, which has raised $29.5 million to date, has a near-term strategy to possibly partner with drug companies, including those whose products ran into obsta­cles previously and now want to give the nanoparticle plat­form a try. And if one day BIND is able to develop its own oncology franchise, it could provide an opportunity for it to build into a vertically integrated company, Minick said.

Whether the company would build its own sales force, as Sequus did for Doxil, BIND hasn’t made that decision yet, he said. “But it certainly is an option for us,” he said.

Cancer is just one of the diseases where BIND is focus­ing its attention. The company also is developing products in cardiovascular disease and inflammatory disease, both rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disorder. In addition, BIND is working to develop a nanoparticle plat­form for siRNA-based (gene silencing) products

The $11 million financing was led by DHK Investment, representing David H. Koch, with participation by all exist­ing investors, Polaris Venture Partners, Flagship Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners and NanoDimension, as well as new private investors. Minick came to BIND from his post as managing director of ARCH Ventures.

Koch, who is executive vice president and director of Koch Industries, worked closely with the academic inven­tors of the technology, Robert Langer and Omid Farokhzad of MIT and Harvard Medical School, respectively.