After selling its spinout to Bayer in a $875M-plus deal, NeRRe Therapeutics grabs $28M for some 'unfinished business'
07 Jul 2021
Some biotech CEOs find themselves out of jobs following a buyout. Not Mary Kerr.
In fact, after Bayer dished out $425 million in cash to buy KaNDy Therapeutics and its menopause treatment last August — which was spun out from NeRRe Therapeutics and run by that exact same team — her entire crew quickly got back to work.
Like the drug that Bayer bought (dubbed NT-814), the three other drugs sitting in NeRRe’s pipeline are neurokinin-targeting compounds that had originally hailed from GlaxoSmithKline. Among them, orvepitant for chronic cough was the lead candidate, positioned just slightly ahead of NT-814 as the lead candidate.
“So for us, NeRRe and orvepitant (are) really unfinished business,” Kerr told Endpoints News.
With KaNDy now completely behind them, the small and virtual team of nine has raised £20 million ($27.6 million) to steer the drug toward the cusp of Phase III.
Top of mind will be starting a mid-stage trial to test orvepitant as a treatment for disabling chronic cough associated with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) — a patient population NeRRe has zeroed in on after reviewing a failed Phase IIb study in refractory or unexplained chronic cough.
While the flop on the primary endpoint of reduction in cough frequency was disappointing, Kerr said, all the secondaries were “extremely positive” and “both clinically and statistically significant,” particularly in patient-reported outcomes like the urge to cough, cough severity and quality of life.
As it dug into the data, NeRRe concluded that investigators had difficulty detecting a signal among low frequency coughers, which wasn’t an issue with high frequency coughers. Notably, other drugmakers in the space such as Bellus and Merck have reported similar findings.
“It’s a bit like asthma,” she said. “If you want to see a benefit in asthma, the studies are done in moderate to severe patients because the signal needs to be high enough in order to see a reduction.”
Chronic cough associated with IPF is “the most disabling of all chronic coughs,” Kerr noted.
On top of selecting a new patient population, NeRRe is also planning to go with a different primary endpoint for the upcoming study, developing a new metric for efficacy based on patient-reported outcomes. An observational study is underway to aid in the development, and it expects to send data ahead to the FDA for review by the fourth quarter.
If it all goes well, the biotech would read out new Phase II data near the end of 2023 — and the new cash is designed to keep all options open regarding further financing or potential partnerships.
Columbus Venture Partners, a new investor, led the Series B2, which also featured existing backers Advent Life Sciences, Fountain Healthcare Partners, Forbion Capital Partners, OrbiMed and the UK Government’s Future Fund.
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