One of the more audacious biotech startups in San Diego just got a big vote of confidence at a moment when few companies of its kind are getting any sort of respect.
San Diego-based aTyr Pharma has pulled in $23 million in its Series C round of venture financing, led by Domain Associates. aTyr’s existing investors, Alta Partners, Cardinal Partners, and Polaris Venture Partners, also participated. Domain partner Jim Blair is joining the aTyr board in connection with the deal. By adding the new round, aTyr has now raised a total of about $46 million since it was incorporated in 2006, according to executive chairman John Mendlein.
The company (pronounced A-tire) was founded by Paul Schimmel and Xiang-Lei Yang of The Scripps Research Institute and John Clarke of Cardinal Partners to do something that would have been in step with the original biotech wave of the 1970s. The idea is to better characterize an entirely new class of biological targets which aTyr is calling “physiocrines.” These are natural proteins that send signals between cells. The plan at aTyr is to develop genetically engineered copies of these physiocrine proteins so they can be given themselves as drugs, and to build a foundation of deep understanding of biology so that these physiocrines could become targets for more classic drugs like small molecule chemicals or antibodies.
“This is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity to be associated with a new class of human protein and make drugs out of them,” Mendlein says. “That doesn’t happen very much. It feels like we’re back at Amgen, Genentech or Biogen in the early days of the industry, where people were creating fundamental discoveries about proteins.”
None of aTyr’s drug candidates have yet made it into clinical trials, but the company has shown it can make physiocrine drug candidates in E.coli bacteria, Mendlein says. The company has identified a lead drug candidate, Tmax, which it plans to test as a treatment for thrombocytopenia—a lack of platelet cells that help people naturally form blood clots. That drug candidate should be ready for its first clinical trial by late 2011, Mendlein says. Other candidates are being prepared in the pipeline as treatments for immune system disorders, he says.
The company has rallied some serious talent around the idea. Schimmel is a prolific biochemist, formerly with MIT, and an entrepreneur who has co-founded many major biotech companies, including Waltham, MA-based Alkermes (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ALKS]]), Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ALNY]]), Cambridge, MA-based Sirtris Pharmaceuticals (now part of GlaxoSmithKline), and Lexington, MA-based Cubist Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CBST]]).
Mendlein is also a big name on the biotech scene, who signed on as executive chairman of aTyr back in May. He’s also the chairman of San Diego-based Fate Therapeutics, and was previously the CEO of Waltham, MA-based Adnexus Therapeutics, which also sought to develop a new class of drug molecules, and which was sold to Bristol-Myers Squibb for $430 million in 2007. ATyr’s CEO is Jeff Watkins, a biochemist and the former chief scientist at Applied Molecular Evolution, a unit of pharma giant Eli Lilly (NYSE: [[ticker:LLY]]).
Mendlein talked in some detail about what aTyr is all about, and what drew him to the company. These proteins have long been overlooked
