After overseeing the $4.1 billion sale of radiopharma player RayzeBio to Bristol Myers Squibb, biotech veteran Ken Song, M.D., didn’t take long to set up his next big venture. He is now chairman, president and CEO of Candid Therapeutics, which has debuted with a $370 million series A and a goal to dominate the T-cell engager market.
In an unusual move, Candid’s launch combines fundraising and the acquisition of two biotechs, Vignette Bio and TRC 2004, along with their lead assets. There are big names among the backers: The round was co-led by Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners, Fairmount, TCGX and venBio Partners, with Foresite Capital and Third Rock Ventures also taking part, among others, according to a Sept. 9 press release.
The round is one of the biggest so far this year, coming in ahead of the $325 million series C ArsenalBio announced just days ago.
“It was unconventional to bring together ultimately what was three financings, two licensing transactions and an M&A,” Song told Fierce Biotech in an interview. “But it got done.”
T-cell engagers are bispecific antibodies that bind to T cells and a molecule on a target cell, coercing the T cells to attack the target. The engagers Candid picked up from Vignette and TRC were both developed in China to treat cancer. CND106, from Vignette, targets B-cell maturation antigen, while CND261 from TRC binds to CD20. Both then also bind to CD3 on the surface of T cells.
Song initially formed San Diego-based Candid as a shell company while scouting out the biotech landscape.
“I probably looked at over 50 opportunities,” he said, before settling on T-cell engagers. It was data on CAR T-cell therapies’ ability to treat refractory autoimmune disease by depleting B cells that initially caught his eye.
“Our view was, why are people doing this with cell therapy?” Song said. There are “many approved bispecifics, and they accomplish pretty much the same thing” while also being less intensive treatments, he said. If T-cell engagers prove that they can match or exceed the efficacy of cell therapies, Song thinks the industry should look to move on from cell therapies.
“We should really focus our efforts on doing what we think is the right way, rather than trying to hold on to legacy stuff,” Song said. “We're not there yet, but I think we're going to get there.”
On the assumption that a deluge of T-cell engager bispecific antibodies is coming, Song decided to strike. “What we wanted to do was to set up the company in a way that positioned us to be able to get first to market,” he said. Initially, they needed clinical-stage assets—CND106 and CND261 have both completed phase 1 trials—then the capital and the right team.
Song recruited Timothy Lu, M.D., Ph.D., who developed oral IL-17 autoimmune drugs at DICE Therapeutics (since acquired by Eli Lilly), to be chief medical and scientific officer. Chief Technology Officer Bernie Huyghe, Ph.D., was initially recommended to him as a chemistry, manufacturing and controls consultant, but Song was impressed by his work and asked him to come aboard full-time. And he reunited with his former colleague from RayzeBio Arvind Kush, who is Candid’s chief financial and business officer.
Song chose the name Candid because that’s how he wants the company to operate. “My view is a lot of companies in biotech and a lot of the way management teams operate is that they're not necessarily upfront or transparent in what's actually happening,” he said. “If the data sucks, the data sucks, right? And you should be able to own up to it.”
Candid is now focused on filing IND applications for its new assets so that the company can study them in autoimmune disease; Song said he hopes they will have clinical data on at least the drugs’ safety by 2025.
In the press release, Song specifically called out AbbVie’s Humira and Biogen and Genentech’s Rituxan as autoimmune drugs he thinks Candid’s T-cell engagers can dethrone.
“How many companies can actually sit here and get investors to also believe you when you say these drugs could be bigger than Humira?” Song said. “This is like the same potential magnitude and impact as what we saw with immunotherapy and PD-1/PD-L1. This is what attracted us to it.”