Monday, August 13, 2007

GlycoFi founder backs new startup, lands VC funds

By Ryan McBride

Tillman Gerngross, an engineering professor at Dartmouth College, says he has been looking for a new business opportunity during the year or so since the biotech he founded, GlycoFi Inc., was sold to drug giant Merck & Co. Inc. for more than $400 million.

Tillman said he has now found such an opportunity: ADiMaB Inc., a Lebanon, N.H.-based company that closed on a $6.2 million equity-financing round last month to get the venture started. The firm is developing novel methods of discovering, developing and manufacturing antibodies for big drug companies faced with the expensive task of licensing such technologies from multiple firms to produce antibody treatments.

"That is a very difficult task if you are a big pharma," said Gerngross, CEO and co-founder of the startup.

His plan to provide one-stop shopping for antibodies underscores how valuable the molecules have become to large pharmaceutical outfits. And more companies in the region such as ADiMaB (which stands for antibody discovery, maturation and biomanufacturing) have set out to build intellectual-property fiefdoms in the lucrative field.

Antibodies, which already yield billions of dollars in revenue as drugs, are proteins produced by the immune system to attack antigens such as bacteria and viruses. Drug companies have paid handsomely to own or license antibody technologies from New England biotechs.

In addition to New Jersey-based Merck's May 2006 buyout of New Hampshire's GlycoFi -- which produces antibodies and other therapeutic proteins in yeast cells -- British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC this year acquired antibody developer Domantis Ltd., which had offices in Waltham, for $454 million.

Cambridge-based biotech Dyax Inc., which owns antibody technology known as phage display, made nearly all of its $12.8 million in 2006 revenue from licensing and collaboration agreements with major life sciences firms such as Amgen Inc., of Thousand Oaks, Calif., and Becton, Dickinson and Co. of New Jersey, according to research from Pennsylvania-based financial firm Susquehanna International Group LLP.

Other local biotechs have engineered molecules to mirror some of the benefits of antibodies but avoid IP conflicts over specific antibodies.

Adnexus Therapeutics Inc., for example, advertises its altered proteins (called adnectins) as a way to "avoid biologics patents related to antibodies," according to the Waltham biotech's website. New York drug firm Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. signed a $240 million deal with Adnexus this year to gain access to its adnectins.

ADiMaB, however, plans to sell antibody drug candidates to pharmaceutical companies for a fee rather than licensing its antibody technology.

ADiMaB's plan would be particularly alluring to a drug company that is late to the antibody game and desires a stake in this budding field, said David Dykeman, a life sciences patent attorney in the Boston office of law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP.

Gerngross is developing ADiMaB's technology with co-founder K. Dane Wittrup, a professor of chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wittrup is a pioneer in the field of displaying proteins such as antibodies on the surface of yeast cells.

The firm has been backed by Bay State venture capital firms Polaris Venture Partners, SV Life Sciences and New Hampshire angel group Angeli Parvi -- all of which were investors in GlycoFi.