Pronutria Bags $39M for Research, Possible Staff Expansion and Recruits Two Ex-Vertex Execs
May 28, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.— Pronutria Biosciences raised $39 million in Series C financing, which the company will use to advance its pipeline of biologics platforms, including PN-107 and PN-340, which were approved for U.S. patents in December.
“We have amassed a significant amount of promising preclinical and clinical data from a pipeline of candidates spanning multiple conditions. With these funds, we are now in a position to aggressively advance multiple programs in areas of high unmet nutritional and medical need,” Robert Connelly, Pronutria’s president and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
Connelly also told XConomy that the company, which currently has a staff of 36, could expand employment.
This round of financing was led by new investor Fidelity Management & Research Company and joined by founding investor Flagship Ventures, among others, the company said in a statement. Since its founding in 2011 Pronutria has raised $67 million in financing. In February Pronutria netted more than $28 million from five investors. Pronutria was founded by Flagship VentureLabs with an initial funding of $10 million and additional funding of $12.25 million.
The company launched in 2011 with an aim to unlock homeostatic biology. Pronutria produces oral biologics that “liberate precise, temporally controlled amino acid ratios to restore imbalances in amino acids that are at the heart of important diseases including cancers, rare genetic diseases and disorders affecting the musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal, neurological, metabolic and autoimmune systems,” according to the company website. The manufactured biologics are aimed at restoring cellular homeostasis and subsequently improving health. Homeostasis is a cell’s ability to internally regulate stability without regard to external conditions. Pronutria is advancing research and development programs in several nutritional and therapeutic areas including muscle, metabolic, neurological and liver disorders.
On its website the company claims it has a proprietary library with more than one billion proteins and the capability to “select, validate and express individual proteins with precise amino acid and biophysical profiles.”
In 2014 the company announced two clinical trials evaluating its lead ProNutrein product candidates for muscle and metabolism impacts on volunteers of appropriate ages. The ProNutrein platform looks to identify and develop protein pharmaconutrients, protein nutrients identified in food with beneficial impact in many areas of human health, including muscle, metabolic and gastrointestinal health. In December the company was approved for to U.S. patents for its two leading biologics platforms, PN-107 and PN-340. The patents are valid to at least 2033, and “specifically claim methods of treatment and prevention of muscle loss in a wide class of sarcopenia and cachexia conditions including anorexia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure and compositions comprising nutritive proteins having high solubility and digestibility, with desired ratios of leucine and other essential amino acids, the company said.
In addition to acquiring millions of dollars in funding, Pronutria is being led, in part, by two former Vertex Pharmaceuticals executives. In December Peter Mueller, the former chief scientific officer for Vertex, shifted to the chief science officer at Pronutria. While at Vertex Mueller worked on drug development programs, with emphasis in Hepatitis C, cystic fibrosis, immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, cancer and neurological diseases.
In March Pronutria secured the services of Christopher Wright as senior vice president and chief medical officer. Before joining Pronutria, Wright was senior vice president and head of global medicine at Vertex. In that role he led global development functions across all therapeutic areas of clinical development, medical affairs, clinical operations, medical writing, biometrics, regulatory affairs and patient safety. He directly oversaw the successful submission of Kalydeco for approval to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Will PfizerKline Become the Next Pharma Player?
The speculation surrounding a possible bid from Pfizer Inc. for struggling GlaxoSmithKline is heating up, after one closely-watched biotech analyst said in a note last week that Pfizer buying the company would “unlock access to its balance sheet and improve its tax situation.”
Gregg Gilbert, a biotech analyst at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note to investors “Introducing PfizerKline” that he thinks a deal would be “materially accretive” for both companies. Gilbert estimated that a bid priced at $29.86 a share, via half stock and half cash, which would push up Pfizer’s earnings per share by 10 percent to 16 percent beginning in 2016.
“We believe that the company has a sense of urgency to create value by leveraging the power of its balance sheet to do needle-moving deals,” Gilbert wrote. “Since media reports in the past have pointed to the potential for a Pfizer/GSK combination, we are revisiting that theme.”
We want to know, dear readers, if you agree? Should Glaxo continue going it alone, or might Pfizer buy it and create one of the world’s largest pharma players in history?