|
Co-founders Jill Milne, CEO and Mike Jirousek, CSO of Catabasis Pharmaceuticals secured $39.6 million Series A funding in 2010 back when investment money was tight and VCs were shying away from start-ups.
 | Jill Milne, CEO of Catabasis
|
How were they able to secure such a significant amount of funding?
They de-risked the five elements that investors are most concerned about when investing: 1) the team, 2) the market, 3) the technology 4) Intellectual Property (IP), and 5) regulatory. I had spoken with Jill as to what they (Jill and Mike) had done to be successful in securing their Series A funding.
A little background on Jill--prior to Catabasis, Jill was part of the founding team at Sirtris Pharmaceuticals (acquired by GlaxoSmithKline) and worked at Polaris Venture Partners on the formation of Sirtris. After the founding of Sirtris, Jill joined Discovery Biology, where she led the company's SIRT1 Program, which produced several first-in-class NCEs that are currently in Phase 1 and 2 studies.
Prior to Sirtris, Jill was the worldwide head of the Drug Pfinder Program at Pfizer Global Research and Development. As head of this global program, she was responsible for identifying and evaluating opportunities across all of Pfizer's therapeutic areas of interest. Jill holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University in biological chemistry.
It is no surprise that Jill started another company with her co-founder Mike Jirousek and having worked for a Venture company, she knew their concerns and what she needed to do to make investors feel comfortable. So what did they do to de-risk the five elements?
1) The Team - Jill obviously has a great background, both technical and business, having experience working in big pharma, a venture company and in a start-up. She also had her Board of Directors, Scientific Advisory
Board, Clinical Advisory Board, and business consultants all on board before she started raising money. Catabasis has an extensive list of experts in all areas of business and science advising them. Venture companies look highly on this.
2) The Market - According to Daphne Zohar, Pure Tech Venture, venture people start with the unmet need first and then look at the market opportunity. That is exactly what Jill and Mike did. What was the unmet need that they were passionate about? They identified the diabetes market as a very large unmet need because a lot of companies have tried to develop diabetes drug and have failed for Type 2 diabetes. The market opportunity has already been identified as a significant opportunity but the question they asked themselves is "why has so many drugs failed?"
They recruited diabetes expert Dr. Steve Shoelson, as co-founder of Catabasis. Dr. Shoelson currently serves as the chairman of the company's scientific advisory board and heads the Section of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Joslin Diabetes Center and is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Shoelson "pioneered the role of inflammation in chronic disease states such as type 2 diabetes mellitus, translating his findings in the laboratory to clinical outcomes in studies including the TINSAL-T2D clinical trial." Read on about the technology.
3) The Technology - In analyzing the diabetes market and from the work of Dr. Shoelson they found that there were no drugs available in the diabetes market that addressed inflammation.
Studies in the past have shown that "high-dose salicylate and inactivation of IKK-β prevent fat-induced insulin resistance in skeletal muscle by blocking fat-induced defects in insulin signaling and action and represent a potentially novel class of therapeutic agents for type 2 diabetes."
"Animal experiments and clinical intervention studies indicate that omega-3 fatty acids have anti-inflammatory properties and, therefore, might be useful in the management of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases."
Each compound by itself can work to inhibit inflammation. So, could two compounds given together simultaneously produce a synergistic affect in activating the anti-inflammatory pathways? The proprietary SMART-linker technology was developed linking salicylate and omega-3 fatty acids (DHA/EPA). Their technology will link salicylate with DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) or EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid).
These compounds also have other beneficial affect on lipids, inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis and muscular dystrophy. Catabasis currently has drug programs for Type 2 diabetes, hypertriglyceridemia, multiple sclerosis, and ultra orphan inflammatory diseases.
4) Intellectual Property - Once Jill and Mike had identified the type of technology they wanted to develop; they started filing their patent before they officially started their company and before they had their third co-founder, a diabetes expert, join the company. This gave them the freedom to discuss their technology when recruiting experts to their various advisory boards and raising money from VCs.
5) Regulatory - Salicylate and essential omega-3 fatty acids are known entities in the literature and clinical trials, and used widely used in the market. Thus regulatory approval would be easier to obtain compared with a new compound that has not been proven. The proprietary SMART-linker technology would be the only new entity but it functions as a secondary component to improve the delivery, potency, and efficacy of the drug.
Contact me should you have any questions or feedback on this topic.
Top | 
