Emerging Drug Developer: Intradigm

A hot technology helps Intradigm stay bullish

By John Carroll

Back in 2006, Intradigm Corporation underwent what CEO Mohammad Azab calls a "total restructuring and refocusing of the company." And that's around the time he was doing the same for his career.

After lengthy stints at AstraZeneca and more recently at QLT, where he had been executive vice president of research and development and chief medical officer, Azab had decided it was time his career took an entrepreneurial turn. He was named an entrepreneur-in-residence at Ventures West before contacts at Alta Partners and Frazier Healthcare Ventures put him in touch with Intradigm. Intradigm moved to Palo Alto from Maryland, where it would gain the rights to new delivery technology and come up with a mix of 50 siRNA sequences with the potential to treat an array of cancer and other disease targets.

The Rockville, MD crew that ran the original company has been almost entirely replaced by veterans of companies like Amgen and Genentech. The delivery technology--now a peptide-based polymer--has been honed and the 50 sequences have been whittled down to a focus on three potential clinical candidates. And the biotech plans to pick the most promising candidate as it heads for the clinic in about two years.

That's about as much time as Intradigm has funded in its most recent round--a Series B early this month that brought in $18.5 million. Lilly Ventures led the round with Roche Venture Fund and MP Healthcare Venture Management stepping in for the first time. Existing investors Frazier Healthcare Ventures, Alta Partners, MediBic Alliance Technology Fund, and Novartis Venture Fund also participated.

"We started looking very seriously at the IP in the siRNA space and we found that there are areas of freedom to operate in," says Azab. The strategy has been to "identify a sequence and file for the IP on that particular sequence."

Refocusing also called for a new set of targets.

"The venture community was really not interested in another VEGF drug, even in a new drug class," says Azab. "So we shifted focus to undruggable targets for what we would eventually have first-in-class therapies. We're trying to select a lead candidate from the three and optimizing the delivery technology to make sure it's appropriate for a clinical candidate.

"In the next two years we expect to basically have a lead candidate that will be in late preclinical," adds Azab, with an optimal delivery technology to take it into the clinic. The staff, which currently hovers between 18 and 20, is likely to grow only to about 23 in the near future. But even before getting into the clinic, says Azab, Intradigm is confident that it can position itself to ink a development pact with a major pharma company.

That may sound early for a partnership, but Azab says that different rules apply to siRNA companies. And that's been a crucial point in the company's favor when it came time to raise a new venture round.

"The market has been in turmoil for several months and we have seen a tightening of venture capital investment, particularly in early-stage and technology companies like us," says the CEO. "Technology companies are more capital intensive, with a long time to exit. The reason we were able to do the round is that--although we're at an early stage by a standard metric--if you look at the metrics in the siRNA space, we're not that early. Most of the acquisitions you see are in the preclinical stage."

And that may be where Intradigm is headed.

"It really would depend where we are two years now," says Azab. "No one can go public at this point in time. But who knows what the market is going to do in two years. I think a big source of our funds will come from potential partnerships, and it's likely that a partner could decide it's an acquisition play rather than a partnership. Pharma's being acquisitive."