Orbis raises $93M to turn popular biologics into pills

Dive Brief:

• Orbis Medicines, a European biotechnology startup, has raised 90 million euros, or about $93 million, in a Series A round announced Monday that will fund development of oral peptide drugs.
• Orbis is focused on “macrocycles,” a class of medicines that blends the strengths of small molecule and biologic drugs. The company aims to construct oral macrocycles that work against disease targets already validated by successful injectable medicines, but hasn’t specified which it will go after.
• Incubated by Novo Holdings, Orbis emerged from stealth last year with 26 million euros in seed funding. The company was co-founded by Sevan Habeshian and Christian Heinis, the latter of whom helped start Bicycle Therapeutics, a publicly traded macrocycle drug developer.

Dive Insight:

Biologic medicines are a huge and still-growing segment of pharmaceutical research. A report last year from Future Market Insights noted the market for biologics was expected to reach about $521 billion in 2024 and could more than double by 2034.

Yet biologics are generally delivered by injections or infusions, making them less convenient than small molecule drugs that are taken orally. That limitation leaves an opportunity for drugmakers able to develop medicines that pack the power of biologics into a pill. Switching people from injections to oral drugs could also help with patient adherence, said Morten Graugaard Døssing, Orbis’ CEO and a partner at Novo Holdings.

One solution that has gained traction in recent years are macrocyclic peptides, which are a newer twist on macrocycle drugs, dozens of which have won approval. Shaped like rings, macrocyclic peptides can slip into cells the way small molecules do, but are big enough to interfere with protein interactions, making them possible solutions for some “undruggable” targets. They also appear resistant to degradation by enzymes or stomach acids.

Those characteristics may mean macrocyclic peptides retain biologic-like potency while administered orally, a goal Orbis and other companies like Vilya and Circle Pharma hope to achieve.

Pharmaceutical companies have shown interest, too. Merck & Co. has in late-stage testing an oral macrocyclic peptide drug for heart disease it claims could rival marketed injectable medicines.

“There’s a need for better technologies around making truly orally available macrocycles for a lot of these hard-to-drug targets and transitioning from biologics into an all-oral format,” Graugaard Døssing said.

Orbis’ work is based on research from Heinis and Habeshian that showed how to produce a library of macrocyclic compounds and engineer them so they’re smaller, and better absorbed by the body than existing drugs.

The company hasn’t disclosed which diseases or targets it is pursuing. Graugaard Døssing said Orbis’ platform could be used for “any target” and “is right for any indication, broadly.”

Orbis’ Series A round was led by NEA. Lilly Ventures, Cormorant Asset Management, Novo Holdings, Forbion and the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark were also involved.

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