GSK-backed Ouro Medicines launches into T-cell engager space with $120M and a clinical-stage asset

Armed with $120 million and a clinical-stage asset, another player is emerging in the increasingly crowded T cell engager (TCE) space. Ouro Medicines launched Friday with the goal of harnessing T cells to reset the immune systems of patients with chronic immune diseases.

Ouro’s series A was co-led by TPG Life Sciences Innovations, NEA and Norwest Venture Partners. Monograph Capital participated in the round and also founded the company in partnership with GSK, according to a Jan. 10 press release.

The fledging firm’s CEO is Jaideep Dudani, Ph.D., a portfolio principal at Monograph who previously led portfolio development at Human Immunology Biosciences, aka HI-Bio, until it was bought out by Biogen in May.

Paired with the series A is the licensing of a bispecific TCE, now called OM336, from Chinese biotech Keymed Biosciences. This antibody has already been used in about 70 myeloma patients, Dudani told Fierce Biotech in an interview, and is currently in a phase 2 trial in China for multiple myeloma.

Ouro’s strategy of launching with a licensed clinical asset already in hand mirrors that of another TCE company, Candid Therapeutics, which hit the ground running last September with $370 million and two assets in tow. Like Ouro, Candid also looked to China for its first drug candidates. That company's assets, gained by acquiring biotechs Vignette Bio and TRC 2004, were both developed in the country.

“We started the company around some discovery-stage ideas,” Dudani said. But OM336 presented “a near-term opportunity,” he added, “to accelerate our plans and get into the clinic this year. We're going to learn so much by dosing patients, both for this molecule but also for future iterations of technology.”

T-cell engagers are antibodies that bind to both T cells and a target, bringing the latter into the T cells’ crosshairs. Ouro plans to use them to pit T cells against errant B cells that contribute to chronic immune diseases such as lupus, scleroderma and rheumatoid arthritis. The firm is still evaluating potential indications to pursue with OM336, Dudani said, which targets B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA).

Dudani hopes Ouro can eliminate the need for immune disease patients to take immunosuppressive drugs in perpetuity. The company’s conviction in OM336 stems from the successful off-label use of BCMA-directed TCEs in treating B cell-mediated diseases, according to the release.

“The goal is relatively short periods of exposure with relatively long periods of remission,” the CEO said. “That's what we mean by immune reset.”

The goal of depleting bad-acting B cells so that they’re replaced by new, healthy cells is a common goal of cell therapies—and of T-cell engager companies. Candid CEO Ken Song, M.D., told Fierce in September that he was inspired to pursue TCEs after realizing that bispecific antibodies could deplete B cells as effectively as CAR-T cell therapy while being a less intensive treatment.

Ouro’s goal of “rebirthing” the immune system is reflected in its name, which is derived from the ouroboros, a circular symbol of a serpent eating its own tail.

By cleansing patients’ immune systems of wayward B cells, “you go from waking up having to inject yourself at home to just waking up and brushing your teeth,” Dudani said. “From the patient's perspective, their life is going to be, if we're right, dramatically different.”

This story was edited to reflect an updated value amount from Ouro. The biotech had initially told Fierce Biotech the round was $115 million.