Imara Closes $63M Series B funding round for blood disorder development

By Alaric Dearment

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Imara said Monday that it had raised the $63 million Series B funding round, led by new investors OrbiMed and Arix Bioscience. Other participants in the round included RA Capital, Rock Springs Capital and existing investors New Enterprise Associates, Pfizer Venture Investments, Lundbeckfonden Ventures, Bay City Capital and Alexandria Venture Investments.

Imara said it planned to use the money to fund development of its lead product candidate, IMR-687, which is currently in a Phase IIa trial in sickle cell disease, and move it into later-stage clinical trials. It also plans to fund the drug’s development as a potential treatment for beta-thalassemia, another blood disorder, and expand its pipeline.

“This is a transformative financing for Imara – one that will allow us to greatly expand our sickle cell disease clinical development, widen our reach into thalassemia and build an exciting pipeline,” CEO Rahul Ballal said in a statement. “We are pleased to be working with leading investors who share our vision for creating a company that helps change the lives of patients living with SCD and other hemoglobinopathies.”

IMR-687 is an inhibitor of phosphodiesterase-9, working on the same pathway as hydroxyurea, a generic chemotherapy drug commonly used to treat blood disorders and blood cancers. The difference, according to the company, is that it doesn’t have the safety issues that come with hydroxyurea. Hydroxyurea’s label carries a boxed warning for severely reduced blood counts and carcinogenicity.

The company announced preclinical and Phase I data in September 2017 showing that IMR-687’s mechanism of action could be effective against the red and white blood cell pathologies associated with SCD and that it could be safely dosed in humans at levels shown as effective in preclinical models.

IMR-687 is an inhibitor of phosphodiesterase-9, working on the same pathway as hydroxyurea, a generic chemotherapy drug commonly used to treat blood disorders and blood cancers. The difference, according to the company, is that it doesn’t have the safety issues that come with hydroxyurea. Hydroxyurea’s label carries a boxed warning for severely reduced blood counts and carcinogenicity.

The company announced preclinical and Phase I data in September 2017 showing that IMR-687’s mechanism of action could be effective against the red and white blood cell pathologies associated with SCD and that it could be safely dosed in humans at levels shown as effective in preclinical models.

Source. Medcitynews, Alaric Dearment, March 18, 2019

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Startup HiberCell gets more than $60M to focus on mechanism behind cancer metastasis, recurrence

By ALARIC DEARMENT

Researchers at New York’s Mount Sinai Health System have launched a company grown out of research into the mechanisms behind cancer metastases.

HiberCell, based in New York, launched Thursday with a $60.75 million Series A funding round, led by ARCH Venture Partners and with participation from Celgene, Hillhouse Capital, 6 Dimensions Capital, the NYC Life Sciences Fund and undisclosed institutional investors, family offices and private individuals.

The company’s pipeline page lists two potential product candidates, HC-5404 and HC-5407, in preclinical discovery for solid tumor metastasis and also recurrences of solid and liquid tumors.

The company was founded based on research conducted at Mount Sinai’s Tisch Cancer Institute showing that cancer recurrence is driven by dormant disseminated tumor cells, or DTCs, that can persist in the body for long periods of time. The company hopes to approach cancer as a systemic disease, detect and target DTCs to prevent or delay metastasis. “We know that dormant disseminated tumor cells are critical drivers of cancer metastasis,” company co-founder and chief scientific officer Alan Rigby said in a statement. “In translating this biology into the clinic, our work will be focused on further defining the characteristic genetics and transcriptonomics of dormant disseminated tumor cells and charting a course to leverage our dormancy therapies to improve patient outcomes and survival.”

Rigby referred to HiberCell as “the foundational tumor dormancy company,” but there have been efforts at numerous academic research institutions into the area of cancer cell dormancy. For example, this month’s issue of the journal Trends in Pharmacological Science includes a paper by researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia titled “Targeting Cancer Cell Dormancy.” Another, in the February issue of Advances in Cancer Research titled “Dormancy and Cancer stem cells: An enigma for cancer therapeutic targeting,” was published by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University.

“HiberCell will build on the foundational biology that is in place by focusing on novel tools to better detect, isolate and annotate the survival mechanisms in these dormant cancer cells,” said Julio Aguirre-Ghiso, the company’s scientific founder, in a statement.

Source. Med City News, Alaric Dearment, February 7, 2019