Emerging Drug Developers: Serentis

When Tim Sharpington looks across the landscape of biotechnology, it’s easy for him to find examples of the kind of company he’d most like to emulate. The UK’s Domantis is headquartered near his office in Cambridge, and their $453 million acquisition late last year by Glaxo offers a powerful example of the kind of wealth a successful approach to therapeutic development can offer.

Of course, Sharpington’s upstart biotech company, Serentis, is just a bit smaller currently. Sharpington and his two co-founders, all out of Arakis (which was bought out in 2005 by Sosei), only recently added the fourth member of their team.

“We’re virtual,” says the CEO by way of explanation, with plans to beef up the team with new hires now that the company’s first round of $20.6 million has been supplied by MVM Life Science Partners, Apposite Capital and Novo A/S.

The money guys were clearly captivated by Serentis’ approach to drug development: taking existing meds with a clear safety profile and looking for new indications using in-house pharmacological talent. It’s a relatively low-risk approach to a high-risk business. And their first drug candidates are targeted at wound care/dermatology and cancer supportive care. Serentis also lists additional research programs in fibrotic disease and diabetic complications.

That business model--swiftly advancing new uses for existing drugs--is the same approach that Arakis and others have used to great advantage. And the company plans to develop its pipeline with speed.

“What we look to do is take advantage of drug reprofiling,” says Sharpington, “and be able to move to the killer proof-of-concept experience, then be able to move that on a bit more quickly, with chemical modification changes.”

That’s where Alan Rothaul, chief scientific officer, and the former head of Arakis’ biological sciences, and Andy Baxter, the R&D chief who notched experience as Arakis’ discovery chief, will be concentrating their efforts. Rothaul’s job is to find the target and Baxter will concentrate on reprofiling therapies that can work against it, They’ll be advancing their own drugs into the clinic while the company scouts for other near-clinical products to in-license.

“There’s no magic tool. It’s really a disciplinary skill set of three people, who can look at a problem, an unmet medical need, and see if there is a biological target we want to hit.”

The company’s lead preclinical compounds, SER-1, could theoretically go all the way through Phase III without racking up tremendous costs, says Sharpington. The compound’s safety profiles are already well defined, and the trials could be advanced with hundreds rather than thousands of patients. SER-3 is intended to spur wound closure.

SER-1 is being studied as a treatment for oral mucositis and dermal wounds and it could still go in a number of directions. “If we show activity we could expand into ulceration and some quite big markets.” A partnering deal for that with a Big Pharma player could come “around Phase II.”

This first venture round is enough to advance Serentis to the point where it has three to four clinical-phase assets, with researchers achieving some significant endpoints, offers Sharpington. In about two and a half years, Serentis is likely to need a second round.

“At that point we hope to be in a position to have found partners and have the ability to take niche products further through and think about specialty sales ourselves.”

If Serentis is successful, the money should be there to grow the company.

“It’s an interesting environment,” adds Sharpington. “Especially in the UK. For the right plays, there’s money there.”

And at the right stage there could be a buyout offer as well--or on to commercialization. That stage is a little harder to define, lying out four or five years into the future. By that time, Sharpington is hoping that Serentis will look more like the kind of biotech company that other start-up developers will be looking to emulate.