Odyssey Therapeutics, Inc.

Sionna Therapeutics and Odyssey Therapeutics have joined Metsera and Maze in an attempt to go public via the still rocky IPO route. The biotechs, focused on cystic fibrosis and immunology respectively, filed for their initial public offerings on Friday evening. Sionna and Odyssey departed last week’s annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference with plans for public life as $SION and $ODTX . They join the Nasdaq queue alongside obesity drug developer Metsera and kidney disease startup Maze , which has spun out other companies and formed joint ventures over the years. None of the IPO hopefuls have yet outlined the size of their planned debuts. If all four biotechs follow through with their plans, they’d create a buzzy start to 2025 compared to the relatively dry IPO market of the past few years. The new entrants Sionna and Odyssey are both well-funded, clinical-stage biotechs with experienced management teams, ticking most of the boxes that public market investors seek for drug development startups in the current IPO environment. Last year, Boston-based Sionna in-licensed three cystic fibrosis drug candidates from AbbVie, just months after disclosing a $182 million Series C that would take it through 2026, CEO Mike Cloonan told Endpoints News last July. Cloonan was a long-time Biogen executive and Sage Therapeutics operating chief before joining Sionna in spring 2021. New details on the AbbVie deal were revealed in Sionna’s S-1 paperwork, which was filed on 17 January. AbbVie got $5 million upfront and $8.6 million worth of common stock. The pharma giant could also get up to $360 million in development and commercial biobucks, plus up to $130 million in commercial and sales-based milestones, according to the S-1 filing . Sionna had $180 million in cash, equivalents and marketable securities at the end of September, according to the filing. The mid-stage biotech spent about $43 million on R&D in the first nine months of 2024, a $12 million jump over the same period the prior year, per the S-1. Sionna has raised about $330 million since its 2019 founding. RA Capital owns the largest chunk of the biotech at 29.2%. TPG Growth holds 17.4%, Atlas Venture owns 11.4% and OrbiMed maintains a 9.9% stake. OrbiMed is also one of the largest stakeholders in Odyssey. SR One is the biggest shareholder at 16.2% followed by OrbiMed (14.3%), Fidelity (6.7%) and Foresite Capital (6%), according to Odyssey’s S-1 filing . Odyssey is developing small molecule therapies for ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, atopic dermatitis, systemic sclerosis and other indications. It’s also creating protein therapeutics for vitiligo, type 1 diabetes, systemic lupus erythematosus and asthma. The preclinical asthma program is part of the burgeoning TSLP arena. Gary Glick, a chemistry professor-turned-serial entrepreneur, leads Odyssey. The biotech startup formed in 2021 and quickly disclosed three successive megaround financings, most recently a $101 million Series C in December 2023. Glick is also a co-founder of Scorpion Therapeutics. During last week’s JPM, Eli Lilly said it would buy Scorpion for up to $2.5 billion . Odyssey spent $81 million on R&D in the first nine months of 2024, a $5 million decrease compared with the same period of 2023. The company had about $155 million in cash, equivalents and marketable securities at the end of September.

Eli Lilly, the most talked-about pharmaceutical company in recent years, is buying cancer startup Scorpion Therapeutics about half a year after its $150 million Series C . The deal is worth a total of $2.5 billion in cash that includes an upfront fee and regulatory and sales milestones, the companies said Monday. Lilly’s bolt-on for Phase 2-stage Scorpion marks the third M&A deal on the opening day of the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, after J&J’s buyout of Intra-Cellular Therapies and GSK’s acquisition of privately-held IDRx. While Lilly has the fifth-largest amount of M&A firepower at $85 billion, according to a Jefferies report from August, the Indianapolis-based drug giant disclosed just one biopharma acquisition last year. It dished out $3.2 billion for Morphic Therapeutic after a small shopping spree in 2023, when it bought at least five drugmakers, including three oncology startups , an obesity biotech and an I&I company . Lilly has only done small tuck-in acquisitions in recent years. It doesn’t want to do large, transformational deals, chief scientific officer Dan Skovronsky has previously said in an interview with Endpoints News . The deal also fits into the broader bolt-on strategy of 2024, during which no drugmakers made an acquisition above $4.9 billion (though the J&J/Intra-Cellular tie-up broke that streak Monday morning.) Lilly’s buyout comes a few months after Scorpion detailed a cut of clinical data on STX-478 , its oral, CNS-penetrating inhibitor of mutant PI3Kα at ESMO. The common cancer driver is found in a variety of tumors. Scorpion hopes to compete with PIK3CA-mutated cancer medicines from Novartis and Roche, among others. Lilly’s own pipeline includes an asset dubbed LY4045004. In November, Lilly said that next-gen PI3Kα inhibitor is slated to enter the clinical in the first half of 2025 after being informed by predecessor molecule, LOXO-783, which went through Phase 1. Both Loxo and Scorpion were co-founded by Mass General Cancer Center’s Keith Flaherty. Lilly acquired Loxo, announced at this time five years ago, for about $8 billion. Scorpion’s other co-founders include Harvard’s Liron Bar-Peled and Gaddy Getz, as well as Odyssey Therapeutics CEO Gary Glick. For the past year, Scorpion has been led by CEO Adam Friedman. At the time of the Series C last July, he told Endpoints that an IPO was “among potential strategic options” for the company, meaning Scorpion was likely engaged in the popular route known as a dual-track process, in which it prepares for a public market entry while also gauging interest in an M&A exit. “There are many variables that, together with our shareholders, with our board, we’ll determine the timing and the nature of what that next strategic option will be,” Friedman said at the time. Scorpion’s investors include Frazier Life Sciences, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Willett Advisors, Omega Funds, Vida Ventures, Atlas Venture, Abingworth and others. The startup’s pipeline also includes two next-generation EGFR inhibitors in development with partner Pierre Fabre and more undisclosed programs behind them.

Eli Lilly has turned to a biotechnology startup for help building its pipeline of cancer drugs, agreeing on Monday to purchase an experimental cancer drug from privately held Scorpion Therapeutics for as much as $2.5 billion.As part of the deal, Scorpion will spin out a new, independent company that will hold its other assets as well as inherit its employees. Lilly will take a minority stake in the new company, which will be owned by Scorpions current shareholders, among them Atlas Venture, Vida Ventures and Omega Funds.Current Scorpion CEO Adam Friedman will lead the new company along with other members of the startups management.The acquisition hands Lilly a medicine, dubbed STX-678, that is aimed at tumors driven to growth by mutations to a gene called PI3Ka. So-called PI3Ka mutations are among the most common drivers of cancer, affecting more than 160,000 people diagnosed each year with breast, gynecological and head and neck cancers in the U.S., according to Scorpion.A handful of medicines already available, like Novartis Piqray and AstraZenecas Truqap, as well as others in clinical development also target PI3Ka mutations.Scorpion has claimed its drug could be more selective and potent than existing PI3Ka inhibitors, which block normal, or wild-type, PI3Ka and as a result are tough to tolerate. Existing drugs also dont readily reach the brain tissue into which many solid tumors spread. Scorpion says its drug might overcome these limitations and has advanced the treatment into a Phase 1/2 trial in multiple tumor types, among them a common form of breast cancer.Scorpion has been collaborating with Pfizer to study STX-678 together with a so-called CDK4 inhibitor. Lilly sells a drug, called Verzenio, that similarly targets CDK4 alongside a related protein.The deal will expand a cancer drug division Lilly has poured considerable resources into as a complement to its lucrative metabolic disease business. Lilly acquired Loxo Oncology in 2019 and, since then, has used deals to buy into other areas of precision oncology such as radiopharmaceuticals and antibody-drug conjugates.Verzenio, which Lilly discovered and developed internally, has become the top-selling drug of its class, though much of Lillys revenue is derived from its diabetes and weight loss treatments. Lilly also has in its pipeline an internally developed PI3Ka inhibitor thats in Phase 1 testing.Lillys deal with Scorpion adds to an upward trend in private biotech M&A. The increase has coincided with a weakening market for initial public offerings, which as forced many mature startups to explore strategic options.Scorpion was co-founded in 2020 by Gary Glick, who helped the company raise nearly $300 million in venture funding before departingin 2021. Prior to Scorpion, Glick led Lycera, which inked a 2015 deal with Celgene, and IFM Therapeutics, which has spun off multiple companies that were acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb and Novartis.Glicks latest company, Odyssey Therapeutics, is developing treatments for inflammatory diseases. '