April 6, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
After San Carlos, Calif.-based Flexus Biosciences was bought by New York’s Bristol-Myers Squibb Company for $1.25 billion in February 2015, company execs Terry Rosen and Juan Jaen turned around and started a new company.
Flexus Biosciences was founded in 2013 with a focus on small-molecule cancer immunotherapies that target regulatory T cells. The company utilizes immunology techniques to identify Agents for Reversal of Tumor Immunosuppression (ARTIS).
On Feb. 23, 2015, Bristol-Myers Squibb bought all the outstanding capital stock of Flexus for a potential consideration of $1.25 billion. $800 million was upfront and the additional $450 million depends on meeting developmental milestones.
“With the addition of a potentially best-in-class ID01 inhibitor and the broad IDO/TDO programs, Bristol-Myers Squibb will accelerate its ability to explore numerous immunotherapeutic approaches across tumor types, including combinations with our biologic checkpoint and co-stimulatory agents that target different and complementary pathways,” said Francis Cuss, executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Bristol-Myers Squibb in a statement.
Less than two months later, two of the Flexus’s executives and founders, Terry Rosen, Flexus chief executive officer, and Juan Jaen, head of Flexus research and development, have joined to form a new company. They plan to crank out a new immuno-oncology drug candidate once a year.
The two Flexus scientists and execs became interested in what they called “Goldilocks targets,” or biological targets that were validated, but weren’t getting much interest from other companies. They latched onto ID01 and TD02, which are enzymes that help conceal cancer cells from the body’s immune system. After Flexus received $38 million in financing, they pulled together a team of more than 30 scientists that quickly created several ID01 inhibitors. Those inhibitors inspired the Bristol-Myers Squibb deal.
The Bristol-Myers Squibb deal bought the company and the ID01 and TD02 compounds, but the rest of the assets are being spun into the new company. Although details are still pending, Rosen and Jaen expect funding will come from investors who invested in Flexus.
The most likely candidate for the new company is FLX925, a dual inhibitor of FLT3 and CDK4/6, which were licensed from Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Amgen in 2004. They first met while students at the University of Michigan. Rosen stayed with Amgen in May 2014.
The two men worked together at South San Francisco, Calif.-based Tularik before that company was acquired by Amgen . Rosen stayed with Amgen, but Jaen left to be the chief science officer and senior vice president of drug discovery at ChemoCentryx, Inc. , then joined together in 2013 to form Flexus.
“We’ve done some good initial work,” says Rosen in a statement, “and we feel good about it, but our goal is to build something that is long term and sustainable.”
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