Biotech startup pulls in $187M to make ‘multi-payload’ ADCs

Dive Brief:

• Callio Therapeutics on Monday launched with $187 million in Series A funding and a license to a technology that can make antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs, with multiple tumor-killing payloads.
• The startup’s ADC capabilities come via a deal with Hummingbird Bioscience, a Singapore-based antibody specialist. Hummingbird granted Callio an exclusive license to use its “multi-payload” ADC technology in oncology. In return, Hummingbird received equity in Callio and could get additional milestone payments.
• Headquartered in Seattle and Singapore, Callio was launched by Frazier Life Sciences. Its Series A was led by Frazier and involved nine other investors, among them Jeito Capital, Novo Holdings and Omega Funds.

Dive Insight:

While drugmakers have been working on ADCs for decades, technical advances and clinical trial successes over the last several years have spurred broader interest in the approach, which some see as a way to improve upon standard chemotherapy.

ADCs link a toxin to a targeting antibody so that they’re meant to hit cancer cells without destroying surrounding healthy tissue. One of the most successful examples is Enhertu, which has helped change how some breast cancers are treated on its way to becoming a multibillion-dollar seller for its makers AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo. Newer developers like Callio aim to take the technology further.

The lead prospect Callio licensed from Hummingbird targets the well-known cancer protein HER2, as Enhertu does. But unlike Enhertu, it carries more than one payload. That additional cargo is supposed to boost its potency and help overcome resistance to ADCs that, like Enhertu, deliver a so-called topoisomerase 1 inhibitor to malignant cells.

Callio licensed a second ADC from Hummingbird as well, but didn’t reveal what it targets.

“Multi-payload ADCs have the potential to enable the targeted delivery of rational drug combinations to cancer cells, and may provide significantly enhanced efficacy,” Piers Ingram, Callio’s CEO, said in a statement.

Ingram, who co-founded Callio, is also the CEO and co-founder of Hummingbird. The startup’s C-suite includes two other executives, Jerome Boyd-Kirkup and Angele Maki, from Hummingbird, as well as Naomi Hunder, the former chief medical officer of ProfoundBio, an ADC startup Genmab acquired last year.

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