BioSpace has been compiling a list of the most innovative and exciting biotechs for a decade. Here we take a look back at noteworthy companies from each of those lists.
2024 marked the 10th year of BioSpace’s NextGen list, a collection of biotechs that are on the cutting edge and poised to break barriers in the industry.
As we prep next year’s list, to be released in January, we decided to take a look back at a notable honoree from each of our past lists. There were many fascinating companies that have gone on to great things; on the other hand, sometimes things don’t go as well as we predicted. We have a few not-so-great stories to tell, too.
___________________________________________
2024
ReNAgade Therapeutics
Status: Bought by Orna Therapeutics
This company made our list for a pretty big reason: a massive $300 million series A in one of the toughest financing environments in recent memory. The company was launched in May 2023 to develop RNA medicines to treat diseases anywhere in the body.
One of the lead investors in the round was MPM BioImpact, whose managing partner Ansbert Gadicke founded ReNAgade.
Early in the biotech’s history as a stealth company, there was a bit of foreshadowing as to where the company would end up. ReNAgade struck up a partnership with Orna Therapeutics, which was also working on RNA therapeutics. The work attracted the attention of Merck in a deal worth up to $3.5 billion with development and commercialization milestones.
Given the money on the line, Orna went all in on ReNAgade, buying out the biotech in May of this year—almost a year to the day after its launch. Financial details were not disclosed.
See the full class of 2024.
___________________________________________
2023
Mariana Oncology
Status: Bought by Novartis
What a year 2023 turned out to be for Mariana Oncology. After raising a $175 million series B in September of that year, the company was bought out by Novartis for $1 billion, plus $750 million in milestones.
Originally known as Curie Therapeutics, Mariana emerged from stealth with a $75 series A raise in December 2021 to develop new radiopharmaceuticals. The company caught our eye and made the 2023 list, but apparently Novartis was keeping an eye too. The radiopharmaceutical-hungry Big Pharma said at the time of the deal that Mariana’s technology would help it double down in the field of radioligand therapeutics.
On a recent earnings call, Novartis executives expressed their excitement in the Mariana technology, saying that candidates from the buyout are speeding toward the clinic and could go after well-established antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) targets.
See the full class of 2023.
___________________________________________
2022
Eikon Therapeutics
Status: Operating
Eikon has spent the two years since landing on our list racking up cash and poaching executives from CEO Rodger Perlmutter’s former employer Merck.
The biotech’s raises have been huge in a really tough market: a $148 million series A in May 2021, $518 million for a January 2022 series B and most recently, $106 million in series C financing in June 2023.
At the most recent raise, Eikon also announced the acquisition of a clinical pipeline. The company now boasts oncology assets in Phase I and II testing for non-small cell lung cancer and melanoma, respectively. The rest of Eikon’s pipeline is in preclinical research or discovery.
See the full class of 2022.
___________________________________________
2021
EQRx
Status: Bought by Revolution Medicines, assets terminated
EQRx emerged with a lofty goal we could all get behind: develop drugs at a lower cost. It raised a cool $200 million in a July 2020 series A, then caught the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) wave to the Nasdaq just over a year later, adding $1.8 billion in an August 2021 IPO. The company was helmed at first by serial biotech entrepreneur Alexis Borisy.
Trouble emerged shortly thereafter, with EQRx cutting lead asset sugemalimab for NSCLC after determining it had no path to market. The company shifted to two other assets, aumolertinib and lerociclib, but later dropped the former. Several rounds of layoffs made the company ever smaller before EQRx finally gave up entirely. The assets were terminated as Revolution Medicines bought out the company and its hefty $1 billion bank account.
Borisy has since gone on to start a venture capital firm called Curie.Bio.
See the full class of 2021.
___________________________________________
2020
Cerevel Therapeutics
Status: Bought by AbbVie
Cerevel as a company is no more, but its medicines live on at AbbVie, which bought the biotech for $8.7 billion in December 2023. The deal was part of a trend of neuroscience-focused biotechs being bought up by Big Pharma, with Cerevel moving in the same month as Bristol Myers Squibb bought Karuna Therapeutics for $14 billion.
BMS was rewarded quickly with a recent FDA approval for KarXT (now Cobenfy) for schizophrenia, but AbbVie too has had success since sealing the deal. Cerevel’s investigational Parkinson’s disease therapy tavapadon improved control of motor symptoms when used with common treatment levodopa in a Phase III trial that read out in April. The data would support a regulatory filing for the therapy, executives said at the time. Two additional late-stage readouts for the therapy are due later this year.
But the real star of the deal was emraclidine, which is in Phase III studies for schizophrenia. Cerevel also brought a major depression treatment to the table.
“These assets clearly will be great additions to our neuroscience franchise,” said AbbVie’s CEO Rob Michael on the company’s second quarter earnings call.
See the full class of 2020.
___________________________________________
2019
Genevant
Status: Operating
One of Roivant’s offshoots, Genevant is still operating today, working on developing nucleic acid delivery technology. Just last week, Genevant signed a deal with CRISPR gene editing company Editas Medicines to develop in vivo gene editing medicines for two undisclosed targets. Genevant has also recently signed deals with Novo Nordisk, Tome Biosciences, Gritstone bio and Repair Biotechnologies.
But perhaps the most compelling story from Genevant since we named them to our NextGen list has been their litigation with famed biotech Moderna over the lipid nanoparticle delivery system used for its approved COVID-19 vaccine.
Genevant and Arbutus Biopharma filed several patent infringement claims against Moderna arguing that the vaccine developer used their technology without license or proper compensation. A judge sided with Arbutus and Genevant in April, with a trial set for next year.
See the full class of 2019.
___________________________________________
2018
BlueRock Therapeutics
Status: Bought by Bayer
Bayer bought cell therapy biotech BlueRock Therapeutics in August 2019 for $1 billion, but rather than absorbing the company into itself, the German pharma kept the name and unit operating. This unusual but refreshing strategy means that the company essentially lives on.
In June 2023, BlueRock reported that Parkinson’s disease stem cell therapy bemdaneprocel was well tolerated with no significant side effects in a Phase I trial with 12 patients. It was the first cell therapy to show positive results in human testing, Bayer said at the time. A September update showed similar safety results. The therapy has since received a regenerative medicine advanced therapy tag from the FDA.
Elsewhere in the pipeline, BlueRock’s investigational iPSC-derived cell therapy OpCT-001 for certain retinal disorders was cleared for human testing in September. The therapy was licensed from FUJIFILM Cellular Dynamics and Opsis Therapeutics.
See the full class of 2018.
___________________________________________
2017
Decibel Therapeutics
Status: Bought by Regeneron
Regeneron made a splash at this year’s American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy meeting in Baltimore when it showcased results of a Phase I/II trial of hearing loss therapy DB-OTO. The therapy restored hearing in two children who had a genetic form of hearing loss.
While Regeneron’s branding was behind the conference presentation, the gene therapy came from Decibel Therapeutics.
Regeneron bought the biotech for $109 million in August 2023, at which point the two companies had already been working together for six years. The biotech was integrated into Regeneron’s genetic medicines portfolio.
See the full class of 2017.
___________________________________________
2016
CRISPR Therapeutics
Status: Operating
CRISPR Therapeutics made history last year as the first company, along with partner Vertex Pharmaceuticals, to gain an FDA approval for a CRISPR-based gene edited therapy. The companies were granted an FDA greenlight for Casgevy in sickle cell disease. The same day, bluebird bio got a similar nod for a competing gene therapy, though not one that involves CRISPR technology.
The FDA approval was a triumph of modern biotechnology. But the roll out has been slow given the nature of gene therapy treatment, and only recently have patients begun receiving infusions of the medicine. Casgevy is now also approved for beta thalassemia, another blood disorder.
The company has turned to the rest of its pipeline, including a CD19-directed CAR T cell program called CTX112, which is being tested in both cancer and autoimmune disorders. CTX131 is in development for hematological malignancies as well.
CEO Sam Kulkarni has expressed confidence in CRISPR’s leading position in gene editing and pledged to be on top of emerging technologies.
“One of the most important considerations for us is that we don’t get disrupted,” he said at the Goldman Sachs healthcare conference in June. “We are the leaders in the gene editing space and we have been, but we want to make sure that we’re looking at every improvement that’s coming out there.”
See the full class of 2016.
___________________________________________
2015
Spark Therapeutics
Status: Bought by Roche
Like BlueRock, Spark Therapeutics was folded into a Big Pharma but kept its identity. Spark earned a spot on our very first NextGen list in 2015 thanks to its active clinical hemophilia program and fundraises totaling $122.8 million.
The company caught the eye of Roche, which swooped in with a $4.8 billion bid in February 2019. The deal eventually turned into a bit of a boondoggle, with regulatory delays slowing things down until it finally closed that December. At issue was Roche’s hemophilia Hemlibra. Regulators worried that Spark’s hemophilia program and Hemlibra together could stifle competition and create a monopoly. Spark brought with it the approved eye disease gene therapy Luxturna.
With the deal closed, Spark has charged forward under the Roche banner. The unit is developing a 500,000-square foot Gene Therapy Innovation Center in Philadelphia as its flagship manufacturing space.
See the full class of 2015.
