Date: Jan 21, 2014 Author: Don Seiffert Source: bizjournals (
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While much larger biotechs like Alnylam, Celldex and Biogen Idec may have been featured in more headlines in the past year due to stock growth, it was a 20-employee company in the Central Square section of Cambridge that saw its shares rise faster than any other early-stage drug company in the state last year.
Idera Pharmaceuticals, which is developing drugs to inhibit proteins in the immune system known as Toll-like receptors, began the year with a stock value of 80 cents a share. As of Dec. 31, it closed the day with a stock price of $4.63 a share - a more-than five-fold increase - and a market cap of close to $290 million.
The two local biotechs with the second- and third-largest increases — Celldex Therapeutics and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals — both have market caps of more than $2 billion, and both had stock increase of 250 to 260 percent.
CEO Sudhir Agrawal said the turning point for the company came mid-year, when it decided to change its focus from the skin condition, psoriasis, to various rare types of blood cancers. The company's lead candidate, called IMO-8400, had shown effectiveness in a mid-stage trial against psoriasis, and Agrawal said that the results, announced last spring, allowed the company to raise $17.5 million in a stock offering.
"As we became financially stable, we looked at new diseases with an unmet need," he said. "We have been transforming the company to focus on orphan diseases."
Agrawal said the company chose several types of B-cell lymphomas that are known to involved the same Toll-like receptors inhibited by IMO-8400. The cancer subtypes are rare enough that Agrawal said he's confident the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will likely consider any drugs to target those diseases for orphan drug designation, which would help the approval process and afford several extra years of exclusivity on the market.
In early December, the company began enrolling patients in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of IMO-8400 in patients with Waldenström's macroglobulinemia, following acceptance of its investigational new drug application by the US Food and Drug Administration. Agrawal said that in coming weeks, he expects to announce further trials in other types of blood cancers, including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Results from those trials are expected toward the end of this year or the beginning of next year, and Agrawal said that in the meantime, the company will be presenting pre-clinical data at several upcoming conferences.
Agrawal said he plans to add a few more employees to the company, and the company just this week announced the addition of Louis Brenner as senior vice president and chief medical officer. Brenner worked in executive roles at Radius Health, Amag Pharmaceuticals and Genzyme Corp.
Agrawal said the company will stay for the time being in its current headquarters on Sydney Street, near buildings for other local biotechs like Aileron and Millennium.
