Imara puts an end to its struggles as OrbiMed, 5AM-backed precision oncology player rides the shell to Nasdaq

2022-10-14

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Since its launch in 2016 out of New Enterprise Associates’ orphan drug accelerator Cydan — and through its 2020 IPO raising $75 million — Imara has staunchly remained a single-product biotech focused on a drug for sickle cell disease. Even though it eventually in-licensed a second candidate, the lead program loomed disproportionately large. So as the drug went, so will the company. A month after selling its top drug — which failed two studies in blood disorders — to the heart disease outfit Cardurion, Imara is handing over its spot on Nasdaq to Enliven Therapeutics through a reverse merger. Imara shareholders own 16% of the combined company, which will keep the Enliven name. It will have a cash balance of around $300 million and focus on precision oncology. Imara shares $IMRA shot up more than 20% to more than $3 in premarket trading. Its market cap sits below $68 million. Fairmount and Venrock are co-leading a concurrent financing round that will infuse an additional $165 million into Enliven. Other investors on the syndicate include Fidelity Management & Research Company, RA Capital Management, Frazier Life Sciences, Commodore Capital and all existing backers. Seeded by OrbiMed and 5AM Ventures, Enliven has flown under the radar for the past few years, working off the beaten biotech trail in Boulder, CO to develop next-gen targeted cancer therapies against targets like BCR-ABL gene fusion and HER2. Meanwhile, execs at Imara had been looking for strategic options to “maximize shareholder value” since April, when it laid off almost all of its employees, reducing the headcount from 30-plus to six. They had ended work on its sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia program in the wake of unequivocally negative Phase IIb results. That drug, dubbed tovinontrine or IMR-687, was a PDE9 inhibitor originally developed at Lundbeck. Although the company briefly held on to the hope that it could go back to preclinical mode and test the drug instead as a treatment for heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, it ultimately decided against doing so. It also scrapped plans for IMR-261, a former Complexa drug that went through Phase II trials for neuro diseases. For Enliven, the new cash gives it until at least 2026 to collect some clinical data. “We recently initiated our Phase 1 clinical trial for ELVN-001, which is being evaluated in adults with CML, and expect to file our IND for ELVN-002 by the end of the year,” said Sam Kintz, Enliven’s co-founder and CEO.

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