Takeda, Celgene Invest $6 Million in Presage Biosciences Cancer Testing Technology

Seattle-based Presage Biosciences made several key moves today that include a $6 million investment from pharma giants Takeda and Celgene and also tapped a new chief executive officer.

Presage said the investment from Takeda and Celgene will allow the company to broaden the use of its CIVO platform. Presage’s CIVO platform was designed to assess the biology of tumor responses to “perturbation by microdoses” of different drugs and drug combinations. In other words, the technology allows developers to test drugs on tumors without having to do so in multiple clinical trials. Dave Johnson, chairman of the Presage Board of Directors, said the company is looking to push the use of CIVO “in clinical intratumoral microdosing studies with a range of biopharma partners.”

The CIVO platform has been developed for Phase 0 trials, also known as exploratory investigational new drug applications. The CIVO platform Phase 0 studies use minute amounts of experimental drugs to assess pharmacodynamics effects in patients. The use of the platform reduces toxicity concerns in traditional Phase I trials, the company said, as intratumoral microdosing uses approximately 100-fold lower doses of drug candidates.

In addition to the infusion of $6 million, Presage named Richard Klinghoffer, currently its chief scientific officer, as its new CEO. Klinghoffer takes over the top spot from CEO Nathan Caffo, who has served at the company for the past nine years. Caffo was Presage’s first employee and Klinghoffer was the second. Although he is leaving his role as CEO, Caffo will continue to serve as an adviser to the company.

Klinghoffer said he joined Presage because of the “transformative potential of the CIVO platform.” The platform is capable of providing faster proof-of-concept studies for early-stage drug candidates, he added.

“Given the well-known lack of translation of animal models to the human clinic, we are excited to provide an approach that allows our partners to test assets in the context where they are ultimately intended to be used – the human cancer patient,” Klinghoffer said in a statement.

Klinghoffer said the $6 million in financing will allow the company to expand its clinical operation and “advance the design” of the current CIVO platform to “reach a wider array of solid tumors.”

The outgoing Caffo praised his long-time partner.  

“Rich's leadership has always been a crucial part of Presage.  Under his guidance, the team created and refined Presage's intratumoral microdosing platform, and executed numerous important scientific partnerships that apply the CIVO approach.  I can think of no one better equipped to lead Presage as CEO and to realize the profound potential of the technology,” Caffo said in a statement.