Blacksmith Medicines

Jan 17, 2023

Katherine Lewin News Reporter Black­smith Med­i­cines and Forge Ther­a­peu­tics an­nounced Mon­day that the com­pa­nies are merg­ing on­ly a year af­ter Black­smith launched as a spin­out of Forge, but there is lit­tle in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed on the uni­fi­ca­tion. The fo­cus will be on in­fec­tion and on­col­o­gy re­search to de­vel­op drugs to tar­get met­al­loen­zymes, or en­zyme pro­teins that con­tain a met­al ion like mag­ne­sium, zinc, iron, man­ganese, cal­ci­um, cobalt or cop­per and per­form a wide range of func­tions in the body from mi­to­chon­dr­i­al func­tion to ni­tric ox­ide pro­duc­tion. Met­al­loen­zymes ac­count for over 30% of all known en­zymes across all species. “Our tar­get strat­e­gy is to fo­cus on met­al­loen­zymes of sig­nif­i­cant un­met need and high phar­ma in­ter­est, tar­gets with val­i­dat­ed bi­ol­o­gy that have been chal­leng­ing to drug due to chem­istry lim­i­ta­tions that we can solve with our plat­form,” Black­smith co-founder and CEO Zachary Zim­mer­man said in a state­ment. Black­smith launched i n Jan­u­ary 2021 with a po­ten­tial $300 mil­lion col­lab­o­ra­tion agree­ment with Eli Lil­ly to de­vel­op small mol­e­cule in­hibitors for met­al­loen­zymes, as well as a goal to ex­pand the reach of Forge’s tech plat­form in­to ar­eas out­side of an­ti-in­fec­tives. In­vestors in­clud­ed Evotec, Mag­naSci Ven­tures, MP Health­care Part­ners and Alexan­dria Ven­ture In­vest­ments. What does Black­smith bring back to Forge’s ta­ble? Col­lab­o­ra­tions that could po­ten­tial­ly earn more than $800 mil­lion in mile­stone pay­ments and roy­al­ties and fed­er­al awards of up to $25.3 mil­lion for its in­fec­tious dis­ease pro­grams, as well as ex­ten­sive li­braries of met­al-bind­ing phar­ma­cophores and a com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of the met­al­loen­zyme genome, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny. Forge first an­nounced the BLACK­SMITH plat­form in 2017, with an ini­tial fo­cus on in­fec­tious dis­eases and met­al­loen­zymes. The par­ent com­pa­ny has had its own suc­cess­es in the past few years. In 2019, Forge part­nered up with Basilea to dis­cov­er, de­vel­op, and com­mer­cial­ize an­tibi­otics as part of its fo­cus on drug re­sis­tance. Forge scored  a $190.5 mil­lion re­search deal with Roche in 2020 that gave the Swiss drug­mak­er the op­tion to li­cense an ex­per­i­men­tal an­tibi­ot­ic be­ing de­vel­oped for use in se­ri­ous lung in­fec­tions. AUTHOR Amber Tong Senior Editor An IPO was off the table, but the immunotherapy experts at Elicio Therapeutics found a way to the public markets after all. Elicio is merging with Angion Biomedica, a Uniondale, NY-based biotech that began searching for strategic alternatives last July after Phase II setbacks forced it to shutter all R&D work. In classic reverse merger fashion, the combined company will operate under the Elicio name and focus on Elicio’s lymph node-targeting approach to treating cancer and other diseases — with the Elicio executive team, led by CEO Robert Connelly, running the show. The stock ticker will change, too: from $ANGN to $ELTX . Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 156,100+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SIGN UP Amber Tong Senior Editor Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers  can visit their reader profile  to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here . Hello — we know it’s not Saturday but Monday, but since Endpoints News is taking a break for MLK Day, we thought we’d change up the time this week. Whether you’re recovering from the JP Morgan conference like me or watched from afar, this edition of the Endpoints Weekly has got you covered on everything you need to know from last week. I was thrilled to meet some of you in San Francisco and learned so much from conversations, formal or informal. It’s been more than three years since I’ve stepped foot in the US (or left Asia! ), so the trip was extra special. Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 156,100+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SIGN UP Amber Tong Senior Editor SAN FRANCISCO — Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson sees Big Pharma being “clearly hesitant” to jump on major M&A deals amid a confluence of uncertainties, from the newly passed Inflation Reduction Act to the looming patent cliff for many of the major medicines currently on the market. Speaking to a small group of reporters on the outskirts of #JPM23 flanked by his C-suite, Hudson suggested Sanofi shares the hesitation but is not in a rush to act because of the internal pipeline that R&D chief John Reed has built up over the past four years, when the French pharma giant joined its peers in turning itself into a “science-led” company. Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 156,100+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SIGN UP Beth Snyder Bulik Senior Editor Myovant and Pfizer are pointing up the fact that prostate cancer treatment Orgovyx is a pill in the first direct-to-consumer campaign for the brand. The advertising pulls the middle syllable from the brand name, encouraging people to “GO with the facts” and talk to a doctor about the oral androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). Real patients and caregivers are featured on the brand website, which also includes a link to an Orgovyx resource called “The MANual.” That platform, launched last year, is meant to help patients when starting on the drug and includes a tracking app, educational material and prostate cancer support community connections. Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 156,100+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SIGN UP Beth Snyder Bulik Senior Editor The pharma industry knocked off the tech industry to take the No. 1-trusted industry spot in Ipsos’ just-released annual survey. More than one third (34%) of adults surveyed across 21 countries rated pharma companies as trustworthy, edging out the tech sector with a 33% average score. While the rankings are relative, it’s still good news for pharma, which increased from 31% last year. Tech stayed even year-over-year, but it’s dropped from a high of 38% in 2018, the first year of the Ipsos Global Trustworthiness Monitor report. Other sectors that also increased for 2022 were government at 22%, up from 20% last year, and social media, also at 22% and up from 16% last year. Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 156,100+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SIGN UP LOG IN