Five years ago, when Chuck Magness and Shawn Iadonato completed the sale of Illumigen Biosciences to Cubist, the two were back at work on a new Seattle-based startup the very next day. Since then, they've been building a different kind of biotech, scooping up as much non-dilutive grant money as possible and looking to a nontraditional set of investors to fund the development of key assets.
Instead of building a simple pipeline, with VCs hoping for a big cash-out at the end of the R&D rainbow, Kineta has divvied its programs into unique LLCs. This way they have the potential to cash out of individual treatments earlier, after early-stage studies carve out a path to a mid-stage program, when Big Pharma partners can step in and take over the work.
"We're focused on the translational phase, trying to solve a need in the industry here," Magness tells FierceBiotech. Today Kineta announced that it has obtained the regulatory authority needed to begin its first clinical study of its lead autoimmune program with broad promise against some big diseases. The announcement comes just days after the biotech revealed in SEC documents that it has garnered $5.8 million in fresh funding to back their first Phase I study.
Kineta has attracted more than $40 million from multiple sources. It counts $14.7 million from investors, including a collection of high net worth backers, $13.6 million from the NIH and other contracts, $2.9 million in "other contracts," and $12.7 million worth of work done by its academic collaborators: $43.9 million total.
In this first study, Kineta will recruit about 60 healthy volunteers in a simple safety test for ShK-186, which was licensed from Airmid and UCI. The program, which came out of the lab of University of California, Irvine Professor George Chandy, specifically inhibits the Kv1.3 potassium ion channel, a new approach for multiple sclerosis as well as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. ShK-186 was created by modifying natural sea anemone-derived peptide inhibitors and has been supported by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
"We have another program in another subsidiary using the same type of model," notes Magness. "It's a therapeutic peptide, re-licensed back from Cubist after the sale." Working with academic collaborators, they expect to get the second program into the clinic in early 2013.
Once Kineta--which has a staff of 25--gets its second clinical program up and running, it will also have three preclinical efforts to pursue. And the biotech says there are plenty of other intriguing academic efforts that promise to deliver more programs as needed.
"Once you do a couple of these," says Magness, "people start bringing them to you." -- John Carroll, Editor-in-Chief. Follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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