John Boghossian is the CEO and Director at Kadence Bio. Previously, he was CEO at Quercis Pharma, a Swiss biotech focused on antithrombotic and antiviral therapies, including the prodrug Kinisoquin.
Before that, John was the first full-time employee at COMPASS Pathways (Nasdaq: CMPS), a UK biotech developing psilocybin for psychiatric and mood disorders. As VP of Operations, he managed overall operations, clinical activities for the Phase 2b study, pre-commercial Market Access, and fundraising efforts, raising $120 million in private rounds and $150 million in an IPO.
John started his career in the Life Sciences and Energy practices at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Europe and the USA. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a Master’s in engineering from Cambridge University, and Bachelor’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Economics from MIT.
Can you share the inspiration and vision behind founding Kadence Bio?
The inspiration for Kadence Bio stemmed from our founders’ early investigations into potential acute treatments for mood disorders, where they explored different classes of alkaloid small molecules. We discovered a compound scaffold with a distinctive pharmacokinetic profile that also exhibited an unexpected effect of delayed ejaculation. This – rather unexpected! – The finding was corroborated by the elucidation of its potential mechanism of action.
We then identified a significant unmet need, as no FDA-approved treatments exist for premature ejaculation, a condition that affects at least 1 in 20 men and their partners globally and hinders intimacy and well-being in these relationships. We quickly decided to found Kadence Bio, with a vision of cultivating sexual and mental well-being by developing novel treatments for sexual health and mood disorder applications.
Congratulations on the recent FDA and MHRA clinical approvals for KH-001. What are the next steps for Kadence Bio in the clinical trial process?
Thank you! We opened our investigational new drug (IND) application with the FDA and obtained clinical trial approval (CTA) from the MHRA in late 2023. Last month, we completed dosing in our Phase 1 first-in-human trial for KH-001, successfully demonstrating its safety and advantageous pharmacokinetic profile for on-demand dosing.
We are now preparing to begin Phase 2 proof-of-concept trials in 2025, where we will dose patients with premature ejaculation to evaluate KH-001’s ability to delay ejaculation and impact on quality of life. These upcoming trials are critical in establishing the drug’s efficacy and advancing KH-001 to market.
Premature ejaculation is often surrounded by stigma and misconceptions. How does Kadence Bio aim to demystify this condition and promote a more open conversation about sexual health?
Our team has experience operating in stigmatized areas, having successfully developed a psychedelic compound to treat depression. Against the norm at this stage in drug development, Kadence Bio actively uses social media channels such as LinkedIn and now X to raise awareness about premature ejaculation.
Our aim is to reduce the stigma surrounding this common condition for the benefit of both affected men and partners. Let’s not forget, for example, that 75% of women do not climax during partnered intercourse, in part given the ‘intimacy gap’ of 3-10x difference in time to climax between men and women. We have recently been developing a campaign called “Beyond the Bedroom”. This will explore media that address themes of sexual well-being—whether through discussions on premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, sexual satisfaction, or relationship wellbeing in general.
What challenges have you faced in bringing KH-001 to this stage, and how have you overcome them?
As a small, distributed R&D startup team, key challenges we have worked through include familiar themes of financing and capital allocation for timely technology derisking. We are grateful for our partnership with re.Mind VC, our lead investor with an aligned focus on mental health and wellbeing innovation. We have been able to reach positive Phase 1 clinical results in <3.5 years and <$10 million in capital, in part by taking calculated risks to run certain studies in parallel rather than in sequence. We also prioritize regular in-person gatherings to maintain cultural integrity across our UK and US teams.
Demystifying taboo topics and building on traditional indigenous knowledge are key aspects of your work. Can you share your journey and experiences that have shaped your approach to these areas and brought you to where you are today?
During my journey to date in the field of drug discovery and development, I have built confidence in our ability to apply computational approaches to build on existing evidence to shorten timelines and increase the likelihood of success. The last company I helped build, COMPASS Pathways (Nasdaq: CMPS), was founded to bring psychedelic compounds into clinical practice. We built our regulatory data package in part on significant anecdotal human evidence from traditional use and academic studies showing meaningful clinical benefits.
I believe we can integrate and further improve on human knowledge about the medicinal use of plants and other kingdoms of nature to tackle unmet needs – leveraging ‘ancient wisdom’ in a modern context. In this vein, we studied alkaloids from kanna, a plant with a history of use by the San people of South Africa. This provided us with nature-inspired chemistry with evident safety and clinical benefit, which was a starting point for standard chemistry toolkits to develop an optimized investigational drug.
Congratulations on Kadence Bio being certified as a B Corporation. How does this certification align with your company values and operations? Can you explain the benefit-sharing agreement with the South African San Council and its importance to Kadence Bio?
Thank you! We are proud to be one of few pharmaceutical biotechs certified as a B Corporation, reflecting a commitment to high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. At its core, a B Corp prioritizes decisions that benefit stakeholders beyond shareholders, including employees, communities, and the environment.
In addition to increasingly common employee-friendly policies including towards mental wellbeing, I’d like to highlight how we involve communities and the environment. One of our core values is ‘reciprocity’, demonstrated through our benefit-sharing agreement with the South African San Council (SASC). Established under the global Nagoya Protocol, the agreement ensures the sharing of public benefits derived from the use of indigenous knowledge. It recognizes the San hunter-gatherers as primary knowledge holders of the kanna plant, whose traditional use was the starting point for the discovery and optimization of our lead compound KH-001.
By entering into this agreement, Kadence Bio provides SASC—a community external to our shareholder base—with economic upside tied to our success towards serving >100 million couples who experience premature ejaculation globally. Part of this upside will also be dedicated to the preservation of the San’s ethnobotanical knowledge and habitat, with a ‘net positive’ (as coined by Paul Polmans) contribution to environmental impact.
Who or what has shaped who you are?
Some of the crucible experiences that shaped me include childhood memories with my grandfather, my first job assignment, and my first major experience of emotional loss. My grandfather (‘jeddo’ in Arabic), like many displaced families in the wake of the global conflicts of the last century, left school aged 15 to provide for his family.
This is a reminder of the sacrifices of previous generations to guarantee our education and the free pursuit of opportunity, which drives me when motivation is lacking. Despite early aspirations to become a doctor, I studied engineering and landed at a strategy consulting firm as a common launchpad for undecided young professionals.
My first assignment was to aid a large pharmaceutical company in renewing its commercial model, which brought back dreams of improving human health and ultimately launched my career and conviction that one should put passion before profit. In recent years, experiencing the suffering of a family member with a neurodegenerative disease has reinforced my conviction that scientific entrepreneurship is my path to contribute to patient access to better treatments, with the hope that it may contribute to alleviating suffering.
What trends do you see in the broader life sciences and pharmaceutical industry, and how is Kadence Bio positioned within these trends?
One fascinating trend is that of ‘human enhancement’, which is in line with potential uses of Kadence Bio’s investigational products. Take OzempicTM and other GLP-1 drugs, which are taking the pharmaceutical industry by storm. Originally a diabetes treatment, it is now all over the news for its use for weight loss, with an increasing cohort of people using it who don’t have diabetes.
This shift is part of a secular trend towards human enhancement—where drugs are being used not just for disease treatment but for lifestyle improvements, such as Viagra for sexual performance or steroids for physical performance. People want to feel better and look and perform better while they are at it. Kadence Bio’s innovation can be understood within this trend.
Our lead product is being developed as the first FDA-approved drug for premature ejaculation, which is a clinical condition impacting between 5% and 20% of men and their partners. One can also see potential benefits towards improving sexual performance and satisfaction for broader populations, improving overall well-being.
What is an area of interest or hobby that not many people know about you?
I enjoy collecting stamps. My grandfather left me a set of early stamps from his native Levant, which sparked an interest in how stamps tell stories of a place. It is fascinating to study how important local, regional and global events find themselves in the motifs in stamps over time. I have enjoyed hunting down old stamps and preserving them, in an era where we hardly use them anymore!
What are your long-term goals for Kadence Bio, and where do you see the company in the next five to ten years?
In the next 5-10 years, Kadence Bio plans to launch the first globally-approved therapeutic for premature ejaculation achieving blockbuster status, as well as bringing further investigational drugs into clinical trials for acute mood disorders. For our lead compound, our next goals are to show efficacy in a proof-of-concept study before moving into late-stage confirmatory clinical trials towards FDA and other regulatory approvals.
We also plan to progress a pipeline of novel compounds focusing on rapid-acting and safe treatments for acute mood disorders. This is an area of significant unmet medical need, as current treatments for acute anxiety, such as benzodiazepines and antidepressant SSRIs, are associated with abuse liability, undesirable side effects and delayed therapeutic response respectively. We have to date demonstrated the potential of our compounds to reverse anxiety and depression behaviors in animal models through acute administration.
What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs in the life sciences field?
My advice is naturally colored by my own experience as only a second-time entrepreneur in an industry characterized by long timelines and many shots at goal. Embrace a mindset of adaptability and persistence—review strategic plans half-yearly to ensure efficient capital allocation as evidence is generated while being willing to stay the course and make big bets you believe in.
Build relationships with mentors beyond advisors and Board members—people you can ask for advice towards whom you don’t have legal duties or monetary retainers. Stay focused on the end goal, improving people’s lives—we are part of society’s innovation engine to improve and extend people’s health, so use this guiding principle to balance resilience and evidence-based decision-making.
Source: https://sejelas.com/john-boghossian/
