From 20 to 84 Employees in Just Four Years, Booming Blueprint Medicines Maps Out a Plan
April 25, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Spurred by an infusion of $170 million, three clinical trials and a deep pipeline of cancer therapies, Blueprint Medicines has quadrupled its employee base, jumping to 84 employees from the 20 it claimed a year ago, the Boston Business Journal reported.
Jeff Albers, chief executive officer of Blueprint Medicines, told the Journal that he anticipates Blueprint Medicines will have its first orphan cancer drug on the market within the next four years—an impressive feat for a company that launched in 2011. Blueprint is developing a pipeline of potent and selective kinase inhibitors for genomically defined subsets of patients with cancer and other debilitating diseases. Blueprint Medicines is advancing three programs in clinical development for subsets of patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors, hepatocellular carcinoma and systemic mastocytosis. HCC accounts for most liver cancers and in the United States it is the fastest-rising cause of cancer-related deaths, Blueprint said.
In September, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted orphan drug status to its novel drug candidate BLU-554 for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. BLU-554, a selective inhibitor of fibroblast growth factor receptor 4 (FGFR4), is currently being evaluated in a Phase I clinical trial in patients with advanced HCC and cholangiocarcinoma. HCC accounting for most liver cancers in the United States. Also in September, the FDA approved Blueprint’s Investigational New Drug application to begin a Phase I clinical trial of BLU-285, an inhibitor of the KIT D816V mutant, in patients with advanced systemic mastocytosis, a disorder of the mast cells. There are currently no approved targeted therapies for SM patients with KIT D816V-driven disease.
The strength of its pipeline has caused several companies to strike deals with Blueprint. In December DiscoveRx Corporation extended its agreement with Blueprint to use its screening platform to expand its library and aid in drug discovery programs.
In April, Roche and Blueprint Medicines struck a deal worth potentially more than $1 billion for the development and commercialization of up to five small molecule therapeutics targeting kinases believed to be important in cancer immunotherapy that could be combined with Roche’s pipeline of cancer drugs. Blueprint received $45 million upfront, with another $965 million in milestone fees and royalties.
"Under this collaboration, Blueprint Medicines will lead preclinical research and development through Phase I proof of concept for all five programs and retain U.S. commercial rights for two programs. We believe this highly collaborative relationship will enable us to accelerate our efforts in the emerging field of cancer immunotherapy and to continue building a leading biotechnology company,” Albers said in a statement.
Blueprint went public a year ago and Albers told the Journal that he has been excited by the results and looks forward to the future. Since Blueprint went public in May 2015, the stock, like many other biotech stocks, has risen and fallen over the course of the year. It went public at $18.53 per share, hit a high of $34.12 per share a month later and then began to dip for the remainder of the year. In January, the stock slid to a low of $14.90 per share, but has rallied back to $18.70 per share, as of this morning.