858 Therapeutics, Inc.

SAN DIEGO--( BUSINESS WIRE )--858 Therapeutics today announced it raised $50 million in a Series B financing led by Avidity Partners with participation from Insight Partners, Mirae Asset Capital, and Alexandria Venture Investments, as well as existing investors Versant Ventures, NEA, and Logos Capital. As part of the financing, Monal Mehta, Ph.D., Managing Director at Avidity Partners, will join the company’s Board of Directors. “We are pleased to have strong backing from an elite group of life science investors,” said Jeffrey Stafford, Ph.D., CEO of 858 Therapeutics. “The Series B financing is a testament to the 858 team and the progress we’ve made across our portfolio, including the advancement of our PARG inhibitor ETX-19477 into the clinic.” 858 Therapeutics plans to use the proceeds to advance its pipeline of small molecule therapeutics. The company’s lead asset, ETX-19477, is a potent and selective inhibitor of the DNA repair protein PARG and is currently being evaluated in patients with advanced solid tumors. Data from the ongoing clinical trial will provide insights for advancing ETX-19477 through clinical development and for understanding the patients who may benefit most from PARG inhibition. The Phase 1 trial for ETX-19477 is a multi-center, open-label, dose escalation and expansion study designed to evaluate safety, tolerability, dose, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and preliminary efficacy. The dose escalation portion of the study is preferentially enrolling patients with specific tumor types and genetic alterations that are likely to confer sensitivity to PARG inhibition. Once a recommended dose for expansion is identified, the company will initiate tumor- and biomarker-focused Phase 2 cohorts. For more information, visit www.clinicaltrials.gov ( NCT06395519 ). “858 Therapeutics has a seasoned management team with a track record of drugging challenging targets,” said Dr. Mehta. “We are excited to partner with the company to help address unmet needs across a variety of disease types in an effort to bring transformative medicines to patients.” About ETX-19477 The company’s lead asset, ETX-19477, is a novel and potent small molecule inhibitor of PARG, a glycohydrolase that plays a pivotal role in the regulation of DNA repair mechanisms. Pharmacological inhibition of PARG results in hyperPARylation, which leads to the death of cancer cells undergoing replication stress. In multiple animal models, ETX-19477 shows potent tumor growth inhibition, which is associated with specific genetic biomarkers. 858 Therapeutics is evaluating ETX-19477 in a Phase 1 study in patients with advanced solid tumors at multiple sites in the U.S. For more information on the Phase 1 study, please visit: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06395519 . About 858 Therapeutics 858 Therapeutics is a biotechnology and drug discovery company developing a portfolio of small molecule therapeutics directed against novel oncology and immunology targets. Its lead programs focus on important nodes in cancer biology, including DNA damage repair, innate immunity, and RNA epigenetics, and expands on decades of drug discovery experience by the founders. 858 is headquartered in the biotech hub of San Diego, CA. For more information, please visit www.8five8tx.com .

Plus, news about Enanta, Inventiva, Eradivir, Novo Nordisk, Evotec, Lundbeck, Iambic Therapeutics and Wave Life Sciences: Genevant Sciences, Repair Biotechnologies team up: The biotechs will work on a new treatment for atherosclerosis. Genevant will apply its lipid nanoparticle work and Repair will contribute cholesterol-degrading mRNA tech. Genevant can get up to $107 million . — Kyle LaHucik 858 Therapeutics nabs $50M: The Series B comes as the San Diego biotech runs a Phase 1 trial for its lead small molecule in solid tumors. Three years ago, the biotech emerged with a $60 million launch round after buying Gotham Therapeutics . Investors in the Series B include Avidity Partners, Insight Partners, Mirae Asset Capital, Alexandria Venture Investments, Versant Ventures, NEA and Logos Capital. — Kyle LaHucik Enanta’s RSV antiviral passes Phase 2a test: The Watertown, MA-based biotech’s EDP-323 achieved 85% to 87% reduction in viral load area under the curve compared with placebo as measured by a PCR test (p<0.0001). The human challenge study enrolled 142 adults who were inoculated with RSV. Enanta plans to publish the full data at a later date. — Ayisha Sharma Inventiva is hunting for strategic options: The company, which is developing a pill to treat metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, or MASH, said Wednesday that it’s in talks to raise more money or engage in new partnerships, royalty deals or strategic transactions. It expects to have topline results from a Phase 3 trial in the second half of 2026. Inventiva’s US-listed shares $IVA were down about 13% on Thursday morning. — Jaimy Lee Eradivir secures $10.25M Series A: The antiviral drugmaker plans to use the proceeds to run a Phase 2a human challenge trial of its influenza treatment, dubbed EV25. The fundraise was supported by founder and chief scientific officer Philip Low alongside board members and other small institutions. — Ayisha Sharma Novo Nordisk, Evotec team up on stem cell-based cell therapies: Novo will fund technology development activities at certain Evotec sites in Europe. In return, it will get an option for exclusive rights to apply the learnings to a “pre-defined therapeutic area.” Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. — Ayisha Sharma Lundbeck inks AI research pact with Iambic Therapeutics: The partners will work together on discovery activities for a small molecule candidate for migraine. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, though the companies said they include upfront, milestone and royalty payments. — Ayisha Sharma Wave Life Sciences upsized its public offering. It now plans to raise $200 million, up from $175 million. — Jaimy Lee

Private investment in young biotechnology companies has appeared to stabilize after an up-and-down past few years, with funding totals from the first half of 2024 roughly matching the pre-pandemic pace.But the sector is not booming like it was in 2021 and 2022. Initial public offerings remain challenging, pushing more private companies to pursue, or at least consider, deals with pharmaceutical companies. Those large drugmakers are now handing over less cash in licensing agreements than they did previously, however.Firms such as Versant Ventures are getting creative, including by turning to a model known as build-to-buy that was popular among biotech investors in the early 2010s.Essentially, this model offers a pharma company the option to acquire a startup or its assets in return for early investment, helping venture companies build out disease-specific portfolios. Borealis Biosciences, which launched Thursday with $150 million from Versant Ventures and an options deal with Novartis, is the latest example.Its the second build-to-buy funding deal Versant has backed this year, following its launch of obesity drug developer SixPeaks Bio in May.I think more and more, early collaborations are important for early biotechs to make sure they have validation and the resources, said Jerel Davis, a managing director at Versant Ventures.Davis, who has worked with Versant since 2011, has worked with many notable life sciences companies, including CRISPR Therapeutics, RayzeBio and Chinook Therapeutics, the latter of which was Borealis predecessor.The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.BIOPHARMA DIVE: Versant seems to like building these young companies with a pharma company deal already in place from the get-go. What is inspiring you to do that right now?JEREL DAVIS: Pharma has always been the destination, source of validation and way that some products from biotech get to market. We had a cycle with the equity boom where I think we forgot that.A bunch of biotech investors and biotechs thought these small biotechs would take all these products to market. But that's not the nature of our ecosystem. The nature of our ecosystem is that we have incredible experts in commercialization at larger pharmas that are going to be the ultimate home for a lot of the assets.If you look back [since] mid-2023 at Versant, we've had five M&As totaling more than $10 billion in our portfolio. If you look at the entire biotech universe, the M&A that's happened over the last two or three years, it's a reminder that pharma is really an acquirer of and the best commercializer of assets.In terms of early-stage company building, there are fewer investors that want to go early and do things that are that visionary. In some ways, pharma understands it better than some equity investors now in terms of the unmet need for patients and what we need to do if we really want to push the envelope.Whats different about biotech investment today compared to where we were a few years ago?DAVIS: The early-stage investing environment has significantly contracted. There are far fewer equity investors that want to put capital into early-stage biotech.These early-stage biotechs are by definition ambitious. They're trying to do something others haven't done before. There is great reason to have that ambition, but there's also some risk. It's hard in today's environment for new, highly innovative early biotechs to live up to their ambition. How do they live up to their ambitions if it's hard to secure the amount of capital required to pull off these important and challenging things?What do you make of executive teams who previously sold later reuniting to start a new company, such as with Borealis?DAVIS: There's nothing more motivating to us than to have a team that has had real impact on biotech and patients want to come back and do it again. They realize they have long careers and their work is not done yet.It's been great to see the energy of this Borealis team and how they're approaching Chinook 2.0 in many ways similarly [and] in some ways differently than the first time around. We love working with repeat entrepreneurs. At Versant, I'd say probably half our companies at least have return entrepreneurs or people who weve worked with in the past. Jeff Stafford [CEO of 858 Therapeutics] is a four- or five-timer at this point.It's not thought about very carefully, but to launch a new biotech, it usually takes a year or two to build a site, lab and team that works really effectively together. If you have the chance to have that on day one, it is an incredible advantage. And if you have that chance to have it on day one with deep expertise in exactly the area you want to go in this case, renal disease it's an even more privileged position to be in.The flip side of this question: Do you think some biotechs sell too early? Another example of a leadership team reassembling after an acquisition is with Prometheus Biosciences, whose former executives formed Mirador Therapeutics this year.DAVIS: A public company and a private company are very different situations. In a public company, you have shareholders that have a share price, and you'll have an offer from a pharma company, and the board or management have to sell with their fiduciary hat on.A private company has much more discretion among shareholders and management as to whether to sell or not. So I think those are very different situations. Prometheus was a public company, Chinook was a public company as well. The reality is, if you have a biotech that's in the public markets and pharma wants to build out a franchise area, they are going to make an offer at some point if you have a promising therapeutic. So it's hard to say that we sell too early. Companies will get bought if theres an attractive acquisition offer on the table. '