An under-the-radar Bay Area biotech has brought in a $190 million series B with the goal of hatching a clutch of new companies to fly its drug candidates forward.
Patient Square Capital led the fundraising round for Osanni Bio, with past supporters the Horowitz Group, Invus Opportunities and the Retinal Degeneration Fund also lending a hand.
Osanni launched three years ago with a $27 million series A and has kept purposefully quiet ever since, founder and CEO Michael Ackermann, Ph.D., told Fierce Biotech in an interview.
“We've had the capital and relationships that we've needed to accomplish our goals so far, and frankly haven't had to be out into the public eye too much,” Ackermann said.
Originally conceived with an eye disease focus, the biotech has since expanded to seven pipeline programs across ophthalmology, cardiology and cancer. Its lead program for dry age-related macular degeneration has wrapped up a phase 1b trial outside of the U.S., Ackermann said, with Osanni now planning to use the series B haul to fund further development and also bring its other assets into the clinic.
As a serial entrepreneur, Ackermann drew on his past experiences founding Tarsus Pharmaceuticals, Oyster Point Pharma (acquired by Viatris), Oculeve (acquired by Allergan) and Presidio Medical to launch Osanni. The company’s name comes from a combination of the names of Ackermann’s two children, and an owl mascot named Ollie watches over the staff of between 20 and 30 employees.
Osanni’s platform is inspired by Stanford University’s biodesign center, where Ackermann previously served as director of biotechnology.
“It's the same process that I've been leveraging for the last 15 years, and that has been successfully leveraged by others as well,” Ackermann explained. “During that process we either discover in the lab or identify underappreciated biological insights and just develop the best way to drug them,” he said, through a process of prototyping and rapid innovation.
The biotech plans to adopt a hub-and-spoke model, the CEO said, with assets being spun off into affiliate companies affectionally called Avians—another owl reference—when the time is right. The lead dry AMD program is beginning this journey now, Ackermann said.
Keeping quiet has had the benefit of avoiding the eyes of all the potential competitors out in the world, Ackermann said, including in China. Though Osanni moves fast, others do too, and “there's a lot of smart people out there.”
“So it's important for us to be able to share at the right time,” the chief exec said.
But, Ackermann added, Osanni will become more vocal now that its programs are moving further into the clinic. The biotech will need to be more visible to attract potential pharma partners for its assets and hire top-tier talent, he said.
“The vision here is for us to scale this model, which is a fairly unique model for innovating and developing medicine, and ultimately to impact the lives of hopefully millions of people,” Ackermann said. “We'll do that in a really deliberate and judicious way, but we're really, really driven by impact.”