Cases in Biotech Entrepreneurship: Selective Start Ups in 2016

In premises of finance, a unicorn is a startup company having valuation at or more than $1 billion. The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones VentureSource has compiled a list of 146 venture-backed private unicorn companies. Interestingly, it also includes ten companies in healthcare industry. It is exciting to observe that many biotech companies have made it to the list, which is another assurance of the global renaissances in biotech industry and hence securing the faith of the investors.

In this post, I would like to introduce you to these companies as it is worth knowing how they did it. Hope you will find it interesting!

1. Stemcentrx Inc. : Cancer Stem Cells Killer Biotech ‘unicorn’

Valuation: $5bn

Total equity funding: $250M

Specialties: Solid Tumor Cancer Stem Cell Discovery & Targeted Therapeutics

Location: South San Francisco, USA

Founded: 2008

Investors: Artis Ventures, Founders Fund (A Peter Thiel Company)

CEO: Brian Slingerland (co-founder)

Mission

Stemcentrx mission is to develop therapies that cure and significantly improve survival for cancer patients by pioneering new approaches to eliminate cancer stem cells, which initiate and perpetuate tumors.

Why a unicorn company?

Advancing from a stealth startup to this valuation, the biotech company showed new approach towards cancer research and drug development with already five investigational drugs in human clinical trialsto their credit. The three out of the five molecules have demonstrated clinical responses in patientswith small cell lung cancer, triple-negative breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and peritoneal cancer. In the pipeline they have additional novel targets for other major cancer types.

2. Moderna- modern future of messenger RNA therapeutics?

Valuation: $3bn

Total equity funding: $675M

Specialties: novel messenger RNA (mRNA) technology

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Founded: 2010

Investors: Alexion Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca, Flagship Ventures, Invus Group, RA Capital Management, Viking Global Investors, Wellington Management

CEO: Stéphane Bancel

Mission

This Company is enabling messenger RNA science to develop a new generation of transformative medicines for patients with their Core “Expression” Platform: messenger RNA Therapeutics (a trademark platform).

Why a unicorn company?

Moderna has already started the first-in-human clinical trials of its inaugural candidate early this year and proposed to move 5 more into the clinic trials by the end of 2016. Comprehensively, this company has developed more than 200 patent applications with more than 10,000 claims which diversely ranges from novel nucleotide chemistries to specific drug compositions. With load of cash and significant partnerships with other giants such as–AstraZeneca, Merck and Alexion, this company have many clinical ambitions for coming years.

3. Intarcia Therapeutics- changing the picture of Type 2 Diabetes

Valuation: $1.8bn

Total equity funding: $598M

Specialties: proprietary subcutaneous delivery system

Location: Boston, MA, United States

Founded: 1995

Investors: Adams Street Partners, Alta Partners, Bank Jullus Baer, Baupost Group, Bay City Capital, BIM, Bio21 Venture Capital, Brentwood Venture Capital, BSI Industries, CBG Compagnie Bancaire, Charter Venture Capital, Delphi Ventures, Farallon Capital Management, Fidelity Investments, Foresite Capital Management, Franklin Resources, Garfin, GC&H Investments, GGV Capital, Glynn Capital Management, Greenspring Associates, InterWest Partners, LGT Bank, Vienna, Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch & Cie, New Enterprise Associates, New Leaf Venture Partners, Omega Fund Management UK, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, Pacific Growth Equities, PAC-LINK Management, Picet, Quilvest Ventures, RA Capital Management, Raiffeisen Centrobank, Trefoil, Triazis Trust, Venrock Associates

CEO: Kurt Graves

Mission

Intarcia is committed to develop disruptively innovative and life-changing therapies that merge medicine with technology and transform therapeutic categories.

Why a unicorn company?

Intarcia have a proprietary subcutaneous delivery system platform technology and a lead product named ITC 650, which is poised to transform the global diabetes market, as it can be a potential once-a-year type 2 diabetes treatment. ITC 650 is currently in phase 3 development and the company expects to file for regulatory approval in the U.S. in 2016.

4. Oxford Nanopore: the Next-Gen Sequencing master

Valuation: $1.5bn

Total equity funding: $344M

Specialties: Immuno-oncology

Location: Oxford, U.K

Founded: 2005

Investors: Illumina, Invesco Perpetual, Invesco Private Capital, IP Group, Lansdowne Capital, Odey Asset Management LLP, Redmile Group, Top Technology Ventures

CEO: Gordon Sanghera (co-founder)

Mission

Oxford Nanopore is developing and selling a new generation of nanopore-based electronic systemsfor analysis of single molecules, which can includes DNA, RNA and proteins.

Why a unicorn company?

This company wants to get your DNA online, which is almost reality with their next-gen gene sequencer known as MinION which can plugs into USB ports. Other than that they have developed PromethION and GridION systems for the high-throughput/high sample number real-time biological analyses.According to company, their products can be ubiquitously used in scientific research, personalized medicine, crop science, security and defense and environmental applications.

5. CureVac: oldest player of messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics

Valuation: $1.2bn

Total equity funding: $265M

Specialties: messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics

Location: Tubingen, Germany

Founded: 2000

Investors: Dievini Hopp BioTech Holding, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

CEO: Ingmar Hoerr (co-founder)

Mission

CureVac stands for creating diverse therapeutic possibilities based on revolutionary vaccination with the utilization of natural, chemically unmodified mRNA.

Why a unicorn company?

CureVac is the first company in messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics area with two candidates in phase III and diverse portfolio in the different stages of clinical trials. This company has partnerships with various multinational corporations and organizations which also includes Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Most recently, CureVac announces that its mRNA-based, first-in-man prophylactic vaccine against rabies “MERAN” has been approved by the WHO as suffix for mRNA drug substances.

6. Adaptive Biotechnologies: the immuno-oncology master

Valuation: $1bn

Total equity funding: $425M

Specialties: immuno-oncology

Location: Seattle, USA

Founded: 2009

Investors: Alexandria Real Estate Equities, BD Biosciences, Casdin Capital, Celgene, Illumina, Lab Corp. of America Holdings, Matrix Capital Management, Rock Springs Capital, Senator Investment Group, Tiger Management, Viking Global Investors

CEO: Chad Robins (co-founder)

Mission

Developing revolutionary immune-based discoveries which combines high-throughput sequencing and state-of-art bioinformatics to profile T-cell and B-cell receptors which can be utilized to transform the diagnosis and treatment of immune-mediated diseases including cancer, autoimmune disorders, and infectious disease.

Why a unicorn company?

This company has ground-breaking immunosequencing technology which can help in translating into clinical diagnostics and therapeutic development. Also it is validating a novel clinical diagnostic as a reliable measure of “immunocompetence” to predict and monitor response to immune-modulating cancer therapies. The immunoSEQ®Assayis another major product to characterize immune reconstitution post-cord blood transplantation. Adaptive also has a sensitive and definitive method to diagnose cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. A new proprietary pairSEQ™ Assay enables high-throughput pairing of T cell receptor (TCR) α and β sequences and thus provides ultimate chances of the identification of highly promising TCRs for adoptive T-cell therapy.