COUR Pharmaceuticals has been around a while, but not until last year did the company solidify behind its ultimate mission with a series A raise.
It took COUR Pharmaceuticals a full decade before finally raising $105 million in series A funding at the start of 2024. But now, CEO Dannielle Appelhans is already looking for the next financing round.
The series A fundraise for the immune-mediated disease biotech was led by Lumira Ventures and Alpha Wave Ventures. The Roche Venture Fund, Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb also contributed, among others. But Appelhans arrived at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference last month ready to bring on new funders, including crossover investors who could take COUR, a member of BioSpace ’s NextGen Class of 2025, to the next level: the Nasdaq.
“There’s nothing we can do to affect the macro environment around it, but our job, really, within COUR is to make sure that we’re ready and that we’re going to continue to create value for the company and for patients,” Appelhans told BioSpace. “We want to make sure we are tight with our governance and kind of public company ready.”
While that work goes on in the background, COUR will be busy in the clinic, too. The company is running three Phase II programs right now in primary biliary cholangitis, diabetes and myasthenia gravis. COUR will be facing some major Big Pharma peers in myasthenia; Argenx’s Vyvgart was approved for the disease in 2021 while Johnson & Johnson has filed for approval of nipocalimab and Amgen recently trumpeted positive late-stage results.
“I’m excited for patients that there is a lot of activity in this space,” Appelhans said. “We don’t hear about these diseases every day, but it’s great that it has heated up, because patients sorely need more opportunities.”
COUR wants to sidestep the other options out there by developing a disease-modifying therapy with improved tolerance, “the Holy Grail,” as Appelhans puts it.
Elsewhere, COUR signed a major partnership with Genentech late last year to work on autoimmune treatments. The deal includes $40 million upfront and $900 million in potential milestones. Appelhans said the deal had been in the works for a long time while COUR built out its internal pipeline. The partners formalized the collaboration around an as-yet-unnamed autoimmune indication.
“It started out with their interest in one of our proprietary programs that we weren’t looking to partner at the time,” Appelhans explained. “It took a while for us to really find out what indication is going to make sense for Genentech and what indication will make sense for COUR.”
All of this activity is the culmination of the extensive work the company has executed since its inception in 2014, according to Appelhans. In that time frame leading up to the series A, COUR internalized its protein production and purification processes and also hashed out a drug master file with the FDA that treats the company’s programs as a platform , speeding the development process through safety and toxicity work and access to patients.
“The last 10 years have led us to this point,” the CEO said. “And it’s a very good point to be at.”
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