(Bloomberg) -- The former chief of Seagen Inc., the cancer company Pfizer Inc. bought last year for $43 billion, has started a new company that uses a promising two-pronged approach to fighting tumors.
David Epstein will lead the new company, Ottimo Pharma, which debuted Monday after four years in secrecy. The biotech company is developing a drug that targets two different cancer vulnerabilities, including a protein hit by Merck & Co.’s blockbuster Keytruda.
Ottimo’s double-barreled approach is similar to the one taken by Summit Therapeutics Inc., whose shares skyrocketed after it outperformed Keytruda in a head-to-head lung cancer trial. Summit has become the talk of the biotech world and plans to start a late-stage trial of its therapy early next year.
Ottimo is well behind Summit. The new company plans to seek approval to start clinical trials in late 2025. Besides Epstein, its leadership team includes James Sabry, who has been chief business officer of BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc., and Mehdi Shahidi, former chief medical officer of Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH.
Like Keytruda, Ottimo’s experimental drug jankistomig blocks the PD-1 protein on cancer cells, unleashing an immune system attack. Along the same lines as Roche Holding AG’s cancer therapy Avastin, it also blocks a protein called VEGF that fuels the growth and spread of tumors.
Ottimo’s drug hits the two targets “in a very different way” than Summit’s, Epstein said, and he expects it will work on a wide range of cancers and be easier for patients to tolerate. The drug will be available in both IV and self-injected forms, he said.
Ottimo is in a series A fundraising round that the company expects will close this year, said Epstein, who once led Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG’s cancer unit. The company plans to use the funds for a large, early-stage clinical trial.
“The goal is to show where our drug works well and make this an attractive acquisition opportunity for a big pharma company,” he said.
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