Proteostasis Therapeutics, Inc.

Co-founder and previous CEO Lowry Curley becomes Chief Scientific Officer NEW ORLEANS, June 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- AxoSim, a life science company building human brains in the lab at scale to heal memory, movement, and pain disorders, today announced the appointment of Alif Saleh as chief executive officer. With this appointment, co-founder and previous CEO Lowry Curley, PhD, steps into the role of chief scientific officer. Saleh joins the AxoSim board of directors, and Curley continues to serve as a member. Continue Reading "I am thrilled Alif chose to join us for our next chapter of growth and scale," said Curley. "His expertise and strong commercial background will accelerate our leadership in the field. I am excited to increase my focus on AxoSim's science and technology." Brain-on-a-chip platform leverages tissue engineering, neural interfacing and AI to test groundbreaking interventions Post this Saleh is a company builder who has raised half a billion dollars in funding to develop and commercialize novel technologies in the life science and biotechnology industry. In 2022, The Healthcare Technology Report recognized him as one of the "Top 50 Healthcare Technology CEOs." Saleh was previously CEO of Scipher Medicine Corporation, Senior VP of GC International Corporation, and he held various commercial and product management roles at Alfa Laval Corporation in Asia and Europe. He received his Master of Science in Chemical and Genetic Engineering from Lund Institute of Technology in Sweden. Saleh said, "Investments into drug development in neurology are skyrocketing but with the highest failure rate in the industry. The time has come to adopt new technologies to increase success rates, and AxoSim is uniquely positioned to facilitate this change. I want to thank the board and employees for entrusting me to lead them through the next area of growth." AxoSim's brain-on-a-chip platform leverages tissue engineering, neural interfacing and AI to test groundbreaking interventions in neurology and generate human-relevant data. The company partners with pharma to accelerate drug development while increasing the success rate of taking drugs from the lab into humans. AxoSim also recently appointed David Weiner, MD, and Dale Pfost, PhD, as board co-chairs. Weiner has 30 years of drug discovery experience in neurology and was instrumental in the development of Nuplazid at Acadia and Safinamide at EMD/Merck Serono. He was previously chief executive officer at Amathus Therapeutics and chief medical officer at Lumos Pharma, aTyr Pharma and Proteostasis Therapeutics. He serves on the science advisory board of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. Weiner said, "To facilitate change, we need multiple stakeholders to buy in. We are impressed with Alif's proven ability to drive diverse stakeholders across an entire industry towards a common goal of real change and improving patient care by adopting new technology." About AxoSim AxoSim is a life science company working to create a world where no one surrenders their identity, independence, and quality of life to neurological disease. In partnership with pharmaceutical companies, AxoSim builds human brains and peripheral nerves in the lab to heal memory, movement, and pain disorders. The proprietary brain-on-a-chip platform leverages tissue engineering, neural interfacing, and AI to test groundbreaking interventions at scale, generating human-relevant data early in the drug development process to increase the probability of success. Visit for more information. SOURCE AxoSim Inc.

Yumanity Therapeutics has struck two agreements to erase itself from existence. Johnson & Johnson has stepped in to take on Yumanity’s lead program and unpartnered discovery-stage candidates, while Kineta has laid claim to its Nasdaq listing and Merck collaboration through a reverse merger. Boston-based Yumanity sounded the alarm earlier this year, outlining plans to lay off 60% of its staff and seek a buyer for its assets. The actions followed the imposition of a partial hold on multi-dose trials of the biotech’s lead drug, stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD) inhibitor YTX-7739, that exacerbated its mounting cash crisis. Yumanity’s search for an exit has led to two deals, including J&J's Janssen Pharmaceutical unit picking up the biotech’s unpartnered pipeline. In return for $26 million in cash, the Big Pharma will secure the rights to YTX-7739 and unpartnered discovery-stage neuroscience product candidates and targets. YTX-7739 spearheaded Yumanity’s advance in its early years, helping it raise more than $100 million and then join Nasdaq through a reverse merger with Proteostasis in 2020. The interest in the molecule reflects evidence of the effects of SCD inhibition, which include the reversal of the toxicity of misfolded alpha-synuclein in mice. Yumanity moved YTX-7739 into a clinical trial in Parkinson's disease patients on the strength of the mice data, but its data drop received a frosty reception late last year. Investors drove down the share price of the biotech after seeing top-line data from a phase 1b clinical trial of 20 patients. The FDA compounded the situation by slapping a partial hold on YTX-7739 in January. With J&J picking off Yumanity’s in-house R&D programs, private immuno-oncology biotech Kineta has swept up the rest of the business. Shareholders in Kineta will own 85% of the combined biotech, which will retain the Kineta name and focus on immuno-oncology while continuing to support Yumanity’s research collaboration with Merck & Co. Merck formed the collaboration in 2020 to work with Yumanity on treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Late last year, Merck accepted the first data package from the collaboration, triggering a $5 million payment to Yumanity in a deal that could ultimately earn it $530 million.

Dive Brief:Sionna Therapeutics, a Waltham, Massachusetts biotechnology startup, announced Wednesday it raised a $182 million Series C round to advance a group of experimental drugs for cystic fibrosis.Founded in 2019 and incubated by investment firm RA Capital, the company aims to challenge Vertex Pharmaceuticals market-leading cystic fibrosis business. The company has five drugs in development, all of which work differently than Vertexs medicines. Two are in clinical testing, and two more could join them by the end of 2024.The company's funding round was led by Enavate Sciences and involved participation from new investors Viking Global Investors and Perceptive Advisors, as well as all of its previous backers. The startup has now raised $332 million since its launch.Dive Insight:Over the last decade, Vertex has built a dominant business in cystic fibrosis, one thats turned it into one of the sectors largest companies. The group of drugs it sells generated nearly $10 billion in sales in 2023.Vertex has established that supremacy, in part, by fending off multiple competitors. Would-be challengers like AbbVie, Translate Bio and Proteostasis Therapeutics fell short in clinical testing. In the meantime, Vertex has raised the bar for its rivals, developing a series of medicines reaching more and more patients.With the approval of Trikafta in 2019, Vertexs drugs can now address up to 90% of the population with cystic fibrosis. Thats left some startups searching for ways to help the other 10%, instead of going after Vertex.Sionna is different, however. The startup is developing drugs for the same group of patients Vertex currently treats, but that are designed to work differently.It claims that Vertexs therapies only partially restore the function of the protein, known as CFTR, thats defective in cystic fibrosis. Sionnas drugs have the potential to get all the way up into normal CFTR function, much higher than where the standard of care is today, said Mike Cloonan, Sionnas CEO and a former Sage Therapeutics and Biogen executive.Those therapies zero in on whats called NBD1, a region of the CFTR protein thats been historically tough to drug. The company says that Phase 1 trials of its first prospect,code-named SION-638, identified doses that were safe and well-tolerated. Sionna has nominated two others to bring into testing this year, while also working on medicines that target a complementary mechanism. One of them, SION-109, is also in early testing.The Series C raise gives Sionna enough cash to operate through 2026, enabling it to design multiple early- and mid-stage trials, Cloonan said.Raising more funds also enables Sionna to consider an initial public offering at a time that's most advantageous to us, he said. We have the capital to make sure the data that we have is the most powerful data that we can have in advance of going public. '