Granite Bio AG

Versant Ventures’ biotech incubation team has launched another Swiss startup, this time focused on a pair of antibodies for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Granite Bio broke cover on Thursday morning after raising a $30 million Series A from Versant and Novartis’ venture arm in 2021 and a $70 million Series B from Forbion and Sanofi’s corporate venture team in 2023. The company has kept a low profile until now, new CEO Patrick Loustau said in an interview. Most recently, he was the chief business officer at Amolyt Pharma and helped orchestrate the hypoparathyroidism biotech’s $1.05 billion exit to AstraZeneca last year. Granite Bio is doing work in one of the most sought-after areas of drug development : inflammatory and immunology diseases (I&I). Large pharmaceutical companies made more than 10 I&I acquisitions last year, according to an Endpoints News tally, and investor interest continued in the first quarter, with the category continuing to “chip away at oncology,” Oppenheimer bankers wrote in a note earlier this month. Several pharma companies have also inked licensing and collaboration deals with I&I startups. While many companies are focused on bispecific antibodies and other modalities for I&I, Granite aims to get close to the root cause of disease by hitting the cellular origin of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Both of Granite’s programs originated in the labs of University of Regensburg professor Matthias Mack. Versant’s Ridgeline team in Basel carried them forward. Versant has launched several new biotechs in the past year, including four obesity drug developers and a kidney disease company that’s working with Novartis . The VC firm was also a founding investor in Santa Ana Bio, another autoimmune biotech that emerged last year with $168 million across its Series A and B rounds. Granite is already testing its lead antibody, dubbed GRT-001, in healthy volunteers. The experimental medicine aims to tamp down on pro-inflammatory monocytes. A Phase 1b trial in ulcerative colitis is slated to begin later this year, according to Loustau. “The approach is to totally deplete the monocytes,” he said, “and by doing that you basically eradicate all the cytokines that are produced by the monocytes.” Monocytes, a type of white blood cell, are essential players in the immune system. “If you look at patients that are resistant to the standard of care, monocytes are a key player in all those patients,” said Rogier Rooswinkel, a Forbion general partner and Granite board member. The company is currently testing an IV version of GRT-001 but it is also working on an under-the-skin option that will likely be taken into Phase 2, Loustau said. Beyond UC, the company is considering the experimental medicine’s potential in Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, fibrotic diseases, MASH and other areas. They could eventually test once-monthly dosing regimens, too. Meanwhile, the startup’s researchers are also developing an interleukin-3-blocking antibody called GRT-002. Granite believes the candidate will treat itch and allergy. Human studies of the asset are set to begin next year to test out that hypothesis.

iStock, Natalya Kosarevich Granite will focus on two antibody therapies, both targeting crucial players in the inflammatory cascade to address autoimmune diseases. Granite Bio entered the immunology and inflammation arena on Thursday with $100 million in the bank and a mission to advance new treatments for autoimmune conditions. Based in Basel, Switzerland, Granite has a star-studded set of backers. Its founding investors include Versant Ventures and Novartis Venture Fund, which led its $30 million series A round. Life sciences–focused venture capital firm Forbion and Sanofi Ventures are also supporting the start-up, spearheading a series B financing cycle that brought in $70 million in capital. Granite’s pipeline will be anchored by two potentially first-in-class antibody therapies. The first, dubbed GRT-001, addresses autoimmunity and inflammation by targeting and depleting monocytes, cells that play an important role in the inflammatory cascade. According to the biotech, previous studies have shown that GRT-001 is safe and well-tolerated, and can “efficiently and dose-dependently” lower pro-inflammatory monocytes—all while sparing so-called tissue-resident macrophages, which are crucial for maintaining balance in tissues. Granite is currently testing GRT-001 in a Phase Ia study with healthy volunteers and plans to push the asset into Phase Ib for inflammatory bowel disease later this year. Granite’s second lead asset, GRT-002, targets the IL-3 cytokine, which is involved in autoimmune inflammation and type II inflammation. GRT-002 is still in preclinical testing, but the startup plans on studying it for itch and allergies. Clinical trials are planned for 2026. With these assets, the biotech is “pioneering a new approach to tackling inflammation, autoimmunity, and fibrosis by addressing fundamental disease drivers at their source,” Granite President and CEO Patrick Loustau said in a statement on Thursday. Joining Loustau is Chief Medical Officer Dominik Hartl, who is an alum of Novartis and Roche, and Chief Scientific Officer Gijs van den Brink, who previously worked at Roche and GSK. Granite joins the handful of startups that have launched this year. In January, fellow Versant company Helicore debuted with $65 million in series A funds to play in the crowded obesity space. The biotech is advancing HCR-188, a GIP-targeting monoclonal antibody, which is set to enter the clinic and deliver an early readout this year. January likewise saw the launch of Verdiva Bio —also in obesity, and with $411 million in starting capital from Forbion, Lilly Asia Ventures and others—and the GSK-backed Ouro Medicines , which seeks to compete in the immunology space with its pipeline of T cell engagers for chronic disorders. Meanwhile, Flagship Pioneering’s newest project Etiome also emerged from stealth on Thursday to use its AI-driven discovery platform to target diseases and block their progression “ before it becomes too late .” Etiome has $50 million in starting capital.

While the monkeypox virus continues to rage across the country, more vaccines are making their way to the US. According to a report from the AP, thousands more doses of the monkeypox and smallpox vaccine Jynneos, manufactured by Bavarian Nordic, are expected to soon be shipped to the US after the FDA said they had completed an inspection of a Denmark-based manufacturing plant. More than 1.1 million doses of the vaccine purchased by the US government are currently sitting in Bavarian Nordic’s facility. The company previously said that it needed authorization from an on-site FDA inspection before it could be shipped stateside. So far, Bavarian Nordic has shipped 300,000 vaccine doses that were made at a third-party facility that had previously been authorized by the FDA. The US regulator typically requires inspections of all vaccine plants to ensure there are no safety or sterility issues, prior to a vaccine to hit the market, although the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines were notable exceptions as the agency conducted no new inspections prior to their authorizations. Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos has been well touted by several governments since the monkeypox outbreak and the company has secured several contracts including a contract with Canada worth $56 million as well as with Germany and several other European nations. Alabama-based Discovery Life Science has netted the acquisition of California-based research cell provider AllCells. AllCells, a provider of clinical-grade and ROU primary cell products, has more than 30 years of collective cell and gene therapy experience, AllCells and Discovery will focus on providing products and services for customers in the cell and gene therapy space including basic discovery and commercialization. “We are very excited to welcome the AllCells team to the Discovery family. Bringing these two great companies together creates a scalable, end-to-end solution that gives our clients unprecedented access to reliable human cellular starting materials with integrated multi-omic analytic services to support cell and gene therapies,” said Discovery CEO Glenn Bilawsky in a statement. According to Discovery, they will combine its existing CGT products and services with AllCells to create a new business unit dubbed AllCells, a Discovery Life Sciences Company. AllCells CEO and president Danny Zheng will lead the combined entity. In an email to Endpoints News, Discovery said the next step for the new entity is “business as usual”. “The difference now is the availability of the combination of Discovery and AllCells’ unified offerings under a single brand; creating a unique vendor capable of speed, scale, and flexibility that was previously unavailable to accelerate cell and gene therapy programs,” the statement said. This marks another acquisition for Discovery as, in 2021 , acquired Albert Li’s project. Li, who founded the hepatocyte inventory company IVAL in 2004, joined the Discovery leadership team as the CSO of pharmacology and toxicology. Spanish life science player Agarose Bead Technologies (ABT) is planning a major expansion of its manufacturing capabilities. According to a report from Manufacturing Chemist, the company is tripling its production capacity to meet the demand for agarose resins and plans to increase its space by 1000 square meters. The company is aiming to manufacture and deliver a continuous supply of agarose resins to eventually support novel therapies worldwide including the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines. However, the cost and exact size were not disclosed. ABT will also seek to expand its three independent warehouses located in the United States and Spain as well. The project is set to come online in 2023. W.R. Grace & Co., a specialty silica and chemicals producer, today announced it is proceeding with an expansion of its contract development and manufacturing (CDMO) facility in South Haven, MI. The expansion will bring a new 4,000-gallon multi-use reactor train and a new centrifuge to facilitate product isolation, which aims to enhance its commercial capabilities. The project will bring their South Haven facility up to three reactor trains enabling its manufacturing services business to support the continued growth of small molecule drug production including custom APIs, cGMP intermediates, and generic APIs. The expansion is estimated to be completed in January 2024. The cost and size of the expansion were not disclosed. The facility was acquired by Grace in June last year by Albemarle to expand its pharmaceutical portfolio. “Our South Haven expansion demonstrates this commitment and addresses the increased market demand in small molecule drug substance manufacturing that has taken place year over year in the past decade. Anticipating the needs of the market, coupled with our expertise, are key Grace capabilities that work together to enable customer success,” said Grace CEO Bob Patel in a statement. Granite Bio, biotech built through Versant Venture’s discovery engine Ridgeline Discovery, and ProBioGen have closed on an agreement to support the development of Granite Bio’s mAb pipeline. The Swiss biotech’s lead candidate is a novel monoclonal antibody for the treatment of autoimmune and certain cancer indications. The deal will see ProBioGen start cell line development with multiple candidates, from which one selected candidate will finally be further manufactured. “In addition to ProBioGen’s proven expertise in cell line and CMC development, it was their proprietary technologies and flexibility that enabled a tailored start of the project and convinced us to select ProBioGen as a partner for our lead candidate,” said Alexander Mayweg, chairman of the board of Granite Bio in a statement.