Star Therapeutics, in the eight years since its inception, has experienced a whole biotechnology life cycle. The firm coalesced, like the celestial body it’s named after, around a clutch of promising experimental drugs for rare diseases in 2018. In Star’s ascent since, the biotech fueled its drug research with hundreds of millions in venture capital backing, creating offshoots such as Vega Therapeutics and Electra Therapeutics.
Stars eventually burn through the gases that sustain their existences before collapsing. But the residual matter can spin up into a new formation. That’s what Star, flush with an infusion of $200 million in venture backing announced Friday, is hoping to do in what CEO Adam Rosenthal called a “reset.”
With the new financing, Star will “go back into stealth mode,” Rosenthal told BioPharma Dive in an interview. The company plans to further study an undisclosed number of experimental biologics for hematological and immune conditions.
In its early days, Star seemed like a hub-and-spoke biotech in the vein of companies such as Roivant Sciences and PureTech Health. Star’s offshoots, Rosenthal said in 2022, could be a more effective way to develop rare disease drugs that might flounder in a traditional biotech setting where they would have to compete with treatments for more popular conditions.
One of those was Vega, which sold to Incyte Pharma in a deal worth as much as $2 billion. Rosenthal said the company could have commercialized its treatment for Von Willebrand disease on its own, but ultimately went with Incyte’s offer given that the pharmaceutical firm had “more capabilities and resources clinically and commercially” for a drug launch.
Another company launched by Star, Electra Therapeutics, is developing a drug for the rare inflammatory condition secondary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis. That spinout priced an initial public offering in September that brought in $350 million.
With both of those exits, Star is back to early stage development. It’s now leaning away from its initial plan to map a universe of named spinouts.
“We had put a lot of attention on them and the names, and even different branding in the early days,” Rosenthal said. “In the last few years, we moved away from it. We want to be thought of as Star, a biotech company with a great team and pipeline.”
Rather than make “me better” drugs designed to outperform the standard of care, Star is hunting for new molecules that Rosenthal said “are hard to replicate and copy elsewhere.”
Joining co-leaders OrbiMed and Janus Henderson in Star’s latest round of financing is RA Capital Management, Janus Henderson Investors and Sofinnova Investments, among others.
“We do not often invest in companies at this stage of development, which reflects our conviction in Star’s ability to repeatedly identify areas of significant unmet need and develop differentiated therapies to address them,” Vish Sridharan, an assistant portfolio manager and research analyst at Janus Henderson, said in a statement.
