Gene therapy developer Florida Biotechnologies is set to be acquired by fellow Floridians NAYA Biosciences for $20 million in shares as part of the portfolio-focused company’s search for disruptive clinical-stage therapies it can invest in.
In the case of Florida Biotech, it was the company’s therapy for a rare genetic disease called Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON). The underlying tech involves tweaking the standard AAV model by adding a mitochondrial targeting sequence to the capsid, meaning that AAV2-AAV9 therapies can be administered in different ways.
The biotech has already put a first-generation candidate through a phase 1 trial, and NAYA said a next-gen asset has now “demonstrated curative results without any serious adverse events noted in preclinical studies for LHON.”
The multiple potential routes of administration, the various AAV serotypes the drug can be applied to and its “multiple orphan indications … supports a broad gene therapy platform for mitochondrial orphan diseases,” NAYA explained in the Jan. 23 release.
“We are impressed by the initial safety and efficacy of the AAV gene therapy developed by Florida Biotechnologies and the University of Miami for the treatment of LHON, a rare and debilitating genetic disease with no currently approved therapeutic regimen,” NAYA CEO Daniel Teper said in the release.
NAYA has entered into a binding term sheet with Florida Biotech that would see NAYA acquire all of the biotech’s outstanding stock in exchange for $20 million worth of NAYA’s shares. Florida Biotech’s shareholders would also be in line for up to a further $5 million in milestone payments down the line.
The deal is contingent on NAYA’s planned merger with Florida-based healthcare services company INVO Bioscience going ahead, as well as NAYA maintaining “sufficient financing to further develop the gene therapy programs.”
The deals with Florida Biotech and INVO are part of ambitious plans by NAYA to “build a group of agile, disruptive, high-growth companies dedicated to bringing breakthrough therapies to patients at accelerated speed through an agile shared platform.” So far, the NAYA family consists of NAYA Oncology, which houses two bispecific antibodies acquired from Cytovia Therapeutics, and NAYA Fertility, which will host INVO’s fertility care clinics and INVOcell device.
Should the deal with Florida Biotech also go through, the gene therapy will fall under another NAYA offshoot called NAYA Regenerative Medicine.
“The NAYA leadership team brings an agile entrepreneurial platform, broad development and commercialization experience, and access to public capital, which will unlock the potential of our promising AAV gene therapy platform for mitochondrial genetic diseases,” Florida Biotech’s cofounder Peter Kash said in the release.