The executives behind autoimmune drug developer Prometheus Biosciences are back, armed with more than $400 million to launch their latest venture, a biotechnology startup known as Mirador Therapeutics.
Based in San Diego, Mirador looks similar to its predecessor, which Merck & Co. acquired roughly a year ago for nearly $11 billion. Like Prometheus, Mirador intends to develop drugs for inflammatory and fibrotic diseases. And like many biotech startups, the company intends to do so with a precision approach, using a combination of genetic insights, large datasets and tailored diagnostics to identify drug targets and patients who might be most likely to benefit from treatment.
"The journey was unfinished," said Mirador CEO Mark McKenna, Prometheus’ former leader, in an interview with BioPharma Dive.
Prometheus’ work led to a drug aimed at a regulatory protein, TL1A, that’s implicated in inflammatory bowel disease. Its acquisition came amid a rush of dealmaking for new types of medicines for inflammatory conditions, which are typically treated with more blunt forces that tamp down the immune system. Following Prometheus’ buyout, Roche and Sanofi each bought into similar TL1A medicines from other developers.
According to McKenna, though, Prometheus didn’t “finish the mission” it had originally taken on. So he brought many members of the team back together to try to build a company focused on precision therapies for autoimmune diseases, leaning on their experience and a wealth of data to develop new medicines for inflammatory conditions of the gut, lung and skin.
“It’s much broader than what we were doing before,” McKenna said.
Mirador isn’t saying which conditions it’ll go after first, or which drug targets it’s identified. McKenna only revealed that those targets have “strong genetic ties” to the diseases it’s interested in. But he envisions advancing multiple new drug prospects over the next 18 months and also indicated the company, with its large bankroll, may do deals to bring in more advanced candidates as well.
“Speed is the new currency in biotech,” he said. “We demonstrated it before and we can do it again.”
The company’s Series A round was led by Arch Venture Partners and includes a long list of investors such as OrbiMed, Fairmount, Fidelity Management and Sanofi. It is the largest private financing raised by a biotech startup so far in 2024, and one of the sector’s most sizable Series A rounds in recent years.
The financing comes at a time when private investment in biotech appears to be picking up after a multiyear slump. Industry insiders interviewed by BioPharma Dive earlier this year indicated that there’s been a recent surge in investments, particularly in newer companies. This week alone, three other biotech startups raised funding rounds of at least $150 million.
A surge of investments has carried more advanced companies, too. In a recent report, analysts at the investment bank Jefferies wrote that public biotech stock fundings are on pace for their best quarter in three years. Initial public offerings are also on their fastest trajectory, in terms of total dollars raised, since 2021, according to BioPharma Dive data.