In early 2021, serial biotech entrepreneur Gary Glick revealed a huge round of financing for his new precision oncology startup. Now he is back again, bringing in some familiar investors who have joined forces to raise more funds for Odyssey Therapeutics, another startup he founded-$218 million. The biotechnology is developing projects in cancer and immunology.
this A round of financing It was announced on Tuesday that OrbiMed Advisors and SR One Capital Management will be co-led by OrbiMed Advisors. OrbiMed is one of the investors in the project Scorpion Therapeutics is an oncology biotechnology company that has received US$162 million in Series B financing Earlier this year. Glick said he started thinking about Odyssey after leaving Scorpion in the spring. A conversation with Carl Gordon, OrbiMed’s managing partner, kicked off work for this new Boston-based company, which has grown to more than 90 people working on seven drug projects within a few months.
“‘Odyssey’ is about the journey,” Glick said. “In some ways, this is the culmination of my 30-year bioscience journey.”
Although Glick is undoubtedly a biotech entrepreneur, he pointed out that he does not have a major pharmaceutical background. Before founding his first company, Lycera, in 2006, he was a professor of chemistry at the University of Michigan for 16 years. For this company and subsequent companies, Glick said that instead of focusing on drug discovery technology, his approach was to think about medical issues and then determine goals to solve the problem.
At Lycera, the goal is to develop oral drugs to treat autoimmune diseases, and this research has led to a drug discovery partnership with Merck. His next venture, IFM Therapeutics, aims to enhance the activity of an immunotherapy called a checkpoint inhibitor. Bristol-Myers Squibb obtained this research, but IFM Therapeutics continues to develop autoimmune drugs that target two targets, the NLRP3 inflammasome and interferon gene stimulators. In 2019, Novartis acquires IFM subsidiary The main NLRP3 blocking program for fatty liver disease non-alcoholic steatohepatitis is being developed.
Glick has not yet revealed Odyssey’s goals. But similar to his early efforts, he said his new startup is also aimed at addressing and overcoming the limitations of existing drugs. He said that, on the one hand, many therapies are only beneficial to certain patients or some patients. Resistance is another issue, and some patients are completely resistant to treatment from the start. The third problem Glick saw was toxicity. He said that although technological advances have produced powerful new drugs, the toxicity prevents patients from fully benefiting. Some of Odyssey’s goals will be new, while others will be ways to reduce risk through some clinical validation. Glick said that Odyssey will not pursue the goals targeted by the approved drugs.
“We are studying areas that others have already recognized, but we are taking a different approach to identify biological gaps or things that others have missed,” Glick said.
One major difference between Odyssey and Glick’s previous joint venture is the scale of financing. The A-series cash allows Odyssey to carry out multiple projects (all developed locally) at the same time. Glick noted that the company’s research includes target discovery. As current plans enter the clinical stage, new plans for new goals will replace them in the pipeline. This research is driven by Odyssey’s embrace of data-the company has hired 30 data scientists. Artificial intelligence and machine learning can help scientists understand in real time the changes that occur in proteins in the context of specific diseases. Glick says this understanding helps Odyssey scientists make better decisions and advance the development of the best compounds.
Odyssey’s drugs will be mainly small molecule drugs, and to a certain extent protein therapy. Although cancer and immunology overlap in Glick’s previous companies, this is not the case with Odyssey, at least not at first. Eventually, they will come together in immuno-oncology research, but “this is a little bit of the future for us,” Glick said.
In the future, it is also possible to establish partnerships with large pharmaceutical companies, but Glick said that he will not conduct transactions just to get more cash. Odyssey received Series A financing, and its other investors include Foreste Capital, Woodline Partners, Logos Capital, HBM Healthcare Investments, Colt Ventures, Creacion Ventures and other undisclosed investment companies. Glick said that if it makes sense for science, Odyssey will seek partnerships, such as bringing capabilities that startups don’t have.
Photo by Odyssey Therapeutics
