THIS
ANNOUNCEMENT CONTAINS INSIDE INFORMATION FOR THE PURPOSES OF
ARTICLE 7 OF THE UK VERSION OF THE MARKET ABUSE REGULATION (EU 596/
2014) AS IT FORMS PART OF UK LAW BY VIRTUE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
(WITHDRAWAL) ACT 2018, AS AMENDED.
9
April 2024
PureTech Health
plc
PureTech Launches Seaport
Therapeutics with $100 Million Oversubscribed Series A and
Announces Management Transitions
Bharatt Chowrira,
Ph.D., J.D., named Chief Executive
Officer of PureTech;
PureTech Co-founder, Eric
Elenko, Ph.D., promoted to President
PureTech Founding Chief
Executive Officer, Daphne Zohar, to lead Seaport as Chief Executive
Officer, together with former Karuna Chief Executive Officer and
Chair, Steven M. Paul, M.D., as Chairman
PureTech Health plc
(Nasdaq: PRTC, LSE: PRTC) ("PureTech" or the "Company"), a clinical-stage
biotherapeutics company dedicated to changing the lives of
patients with devastating diseases, today announced
key progress on its strategic initiatives to deliver innovative
medicines to patients and unlock value for
shareholders.
Seaport
Therapeutics[i]
Seaport Therapeutics ("Seaport"),
the latest Founded Entity to be created by PureTech, today
announced that it has raised $100 million[ii] in
an oversubscribed Series A financing with participation from top
tier biotech investors ARCH Venture Partners, Sofinnova Investments
and Third Rock Ventures to support the development
of a novel clinical-stage pipeline of neuropsychiatric medicines
created and initially developed internally at PureTech.
Seaport will be led by Daphne Zohar along with Founder Steven M.
Paul, M.D., who is the former Chief Executive officer of Karuna
Therapeutics ("Karuna"), another CNS-focused PureTech Founded
Entity that was
recently acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb for $14
billion. Seaport was established by
PureTech to advance certain neuropsychiatric programs and relevant
GlyphTM intellectual property. Following the Series A
financing, PureTech will hold equity ownership in Seaport of 61.5
percent on a diluted basis.
Executing on
PureTech's Hub-and-Spoke Strategy
Consistent with its model, PureTech
has internally advanced Seaport's neuropsychiatric medicines
programs to a key inflection point such that the pipeline can now
drive value for PureTech through an equity stake and license
consideration. This enables PureTech to share the significant costs
of later-stage development with outside investors and direct
additional resources to its innovative
R&D engine for the creation and validation of new therapeutic
candidates. This same approach yielded
PureTech's Karuna, which resulted in approximately $1.1 billion in
gross proceeds for PureTech to date after the Company directed
$18.5 million to Karuna's founding and internal development. Under
its license agreement with Karuna, PureTech retains the right to
receive milestone payments upon the achievement of certain
regulatory approvals. PureTech is also owed certain royalties on
net sales and is eligible to receive up to $400 million in
milestone payments under its agreement with Royalty
Pharma.[iii]
PureTech's business model is
designed to repeat and scale this type of outcome with rigorous
financial discipline. Proceeds are recycled into the support of new
programs and returns to shareholders while maintaining at least
three years of operating cash runway. The platform supporting
Seaport's pipeline is one of several programs advanced during a
period in which PureTech largely fueled its internal development
with funds generated from Founded Entity monetization events, and
PureTech has not needed to raise capital from the public markets in
six years.
Management
Transitions
As part of the strategic advancement
of Seaport, Daphne Zohar, PureTech's founding Chief Executive
Officer and a successful entrepreneur with a longstanding passion
for developing neuropsychiatric medicines, will transition
into the role of Seaport's Chief Executive Officer.
Ms. Zohar will formally step down from the board of directors of
PureTech with immediate effect and has agreed to serve as a senior
advisor and observer to the board of directors of
PureTech.
Long-term PureTech senior executive,
Bharatt Chowrira, Ph.D., J.D., has been named Chief Executive
Officer of PureTech effective as of today and will therefore
continue to serve as a director of PureTech. Eric Elenko, Ph.D., a PureTech co-founder and current Chief
Innovation Officer, has been promoted to the role of President of
PureTech.
A 30-year veteran of the biotech
industry, Dr. Chowrira has been a member of the PureTech senior
management team since March 2017, serving as the Company's
President and Chief Business, Finance and Operating Officer and as
a member of the Board of Directors. Prior to joining PureTech, he
held leadership roles including Chief Executive Officer, Chief
Operating Officer and General Counsel in multiple biotech
companies, including Auspex Pharmaceuticals Inc., which was
acquired by Teva Pharmaceuticals for $3.5 billion, and Sirna
Therapeutics, which was acquired by Merck & Co. for $1.1
billion, and was also a Vice President at Merck &
Co.
Commenting on today's announcements,
Dr. Chowrira said:
"I am excited to step into the CEO
role and to lead PureTech through this next phase of its evolution.
We have demonstrated the evergreen success of our hub-and-spoke
R&D model of venture creation, where we are able to recycle
proceeds from our Founded Entities into both the funding of our
current and future programs to change patients' lives and capital
returns for shareholders. As we continue to derive value from our
existing pipeline, we will focus on what we have always done best:
innovating the next wave of highly differentiated
medicines.
"Our fundamentals are centered on
careful de-risking and streamlined development internally, quickly
de-prioritizing those programs that don't achieve our prespecified
thresholds for advancement to move resources to those that are the
most promising. We maintain 100 percent ownership of programs until
a key value inflection point is reached, and we then have the
option to pursue outside financial or strategic partners to advance
these programs or to continue development internally.
"This approach has enabled our
R&D engine to be both very productive, as demonstrated by the
28 therapeutics and therapeutic candidates it has generated, and
uniquely capital efficient - reflected in the fact that we have not
had to raise money from the public markets in more than six years
and will have returned $150 million to shareholders, pending
shareholder approval of our
proposed $100 million tender offer, which is expected to
be launched after the publication of the Company's
Full Year Results, subject to market conditions. This capital
efficiency also allows us to be selective in determining the best
path forward for each of our programs, and - as demonstrated today
with the top tier syndicate of investors now supporting Seaport -
our discerning strategy has created tremendous value internally
that has not yet been appropriately recognized by the
market.
"At Seaport Therapeutics, PureTech
has brought together the proven team that helped build Karuna and
some of the investors that backed Karuna's initial funding rounds.
I am confident that following our well
charted strategy of starting with validated mechanisms and applying
our proprietary Glyph technology to solve previous limitations will
enable Seaport to provide important new options for patients with
depression, anxiety and other neuropsychiatric
conditions."
"I would like to thank Daphne for
her leadership since founding PureTech and for shepherding the
Company to this next phase. I am grateful that we will continue to
benefit from Daphne's entrepreneurial spirit while she transitions
to run one of our new Founded Entities to drive significant value
for PureTech. I look forward to continuing to work alongside our
exceptional team, and I fervently believe that with this proven
R&D model, supported by a robust balance sheet and strong
management team, PureTech has all the ingredients for tremendous,
continued growth and success."
Reflecting on today's announcement,
Daphne Zohar said:
"I am extremely proud of what the
PureTech team has accomplished and the pipeline of groundbreaking
medicines which we have created that can have an impact on the
lives of millions of people. PureTech has now reached
both financial independence and the important
inflection point of returning capital. The
team is positioned to excel and is infused with the spirit of
creativity that has been with us since the beginning. I will
continue to work on behalf of PureTech shareholders by advancing
the exciting Seaport programs through a structure that can help
unlock their value for PureTech.
"PureTech is in a strong position
with an innovative portfolio of new medicines, stellar team and
robust balance sheet, and I am pleased to be passing the baton to
Bharatt who is a respected executive in the biotech industry and
has been a key senior leader on our team over the last seven years.
I have confidence that under his leadership, together with my
co-founder Eric Elenko, who is now taking on the expanded role of
President, and other outstanding senior team and board members,
PureTech will continue to thrive, grow, and innovate on behalf of
patients and shareholders. I look forward to supporting PureTech as
a senior advisor, board observer and shareholder as it continues to
deliver on its mission of 'Giving Life to Science' to change
patients' lives."
Interim Chair of the PureTech Board
of Directors, Raju Kucherlapati, Ph.D., said:
"On behalf of the Board, I would
like to thank Daphne for her vision, leadership and dedication in
founding and building PureTech. Daphne pioneered the hub-and-spoke
model to create cutting-edge medicines, assembled a leading team
and positioned PureTech for an exciting future and continued
growth. I am pleased we will have her ongoing participation. We are
fortunate to have someone with Bharatt's experience and deep
knowledge of our business to step into the role of Chief Executive
Officer. He is the ideal person to successfully lead PureTech
through this next phase of growth."
The full text of the announcement
from Seaport is as follows:
Seaport Therapeutics Launches
with $100 Million Oversubscribed Series A Financing Round to
Advance Novel Neuropsychiatric Medicines
Daphne Zohar, Founding CEO
of PureTech Health and Co-Founder of Karuna Therapeutics, is
Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Member of the Board of
Directors of Seaport
Steven M. Paul, M.D., former
CEO and Chair of Karuna Therapeutics, President of Lilly Research
Laboratories, is Founder and Chair of the Board of Directors of
Seaport
BOSTON - Seaport
Therapeutics, a clinical-stage
biopharmaceutical company that is charting a proven path in
neuropsychiatry, today announced the closing of a $100 million
oversubscribed Series A financing round. The round was co-led by
ARCH Venture Partners and Sofinnova Investments along with Third
Rock Ventures and Seaport founder PureTech Health. Seaport also
announced the appointment of Daphne Zohar as Founder, Chief
Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors, and
Steven M. Paul, M.D., as Founder and Chair of the Board of
Directors.
Seaport is advancing a
clinical-stage pipeline of novel neuropsychiatric medicines powered
by its proprietary GlyphTM Technology Platform, which
leverages the lymphatic system to create new medicines building on
clinically validated mechanisms. The
financing will support the rapid advancement of Seaport's
clinical-stage pipeline of first and best-in-class medicines as
well as further development of the Glyph platform, which has
demonstrated clinical proof-of-concept.
The company is built on a proven
development strategy and is led by the team that created and
advanced the groundbreaking drug candidate KarXT
(xanomeline-trospium),
which is now poised to be the first new class of medicine in over
50 years for patients living with schizophrenia. Daphne Zohar, the
Chief Executive Officer of Seaport, is the founder and former CEO
of PureTech Health where she also co-founded Karuna Therapeutics.
Under Ms. Zohar's leadership, PureTech's R&D engine led to 28
new medicines, including two that received U.S. FDA clearance and a
third (KarXT) that has been filed for FDA approval.
Dr. Paul, Founder and Chair of the
Seaport Board of Directors, is the former CEO and Chair of the
Board of Directors of Karuna Therapeutics, which was recently
acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb. Dr. Paul is also the former
President of Research and Development at Eli Lilly, where he
oversaw the development of CNS drugs such as Zyprexa® and Cymbalta®
as well as xanomeline, where its anti-psychotic and pre-cognitive
properties were initially demonstrated.
"Major depression and anxiety
disorders are among the most common, disabling and potentially
fatal of all medical conditions. Current standard-of-care
treatments provide inadequate relief for far too many patients.
Seaport's pipeline of investigational antidepressants and
anxiolytics are well positioned to more effectively treat these
disorders and to help millions of people and their families," said
Steven M. Paul M.D. "Given the historically low success rates
within neuropsychiatric drug development, precisely solving the
previous limitations of clinically validated mechanisms improves
the probability of success and enables us to significantly
accelerate development."
"We are dedicated to bringing first
and best-in-class medicines to those that are suffering from
depression, anxiety and other neuropsychiatric disorders," said
Daphne Zohar, Founder and CEO of Seaport Therapeutics. "I'm excited
to deliver on this mission along with a stellar team of senior
leaders and investors."
All of the programs in Seaport's
pipeline are based on the Glyph platform, which is designed to
enable and enhance oral bioavailability, avoid first-pass
metabolism and reduce hepatotoxicity and other side effects to
advance active drugs that were previously held back by those
limitations. Seaport's most advanced therapeutic candidate is
SPT-300,[iv] which is
an oral prodrug of allopregnanolone, an endogenous neurosteroid, in
development for the treatment of anxious depression.
Allopregnanolone has demonstrated therapeutic
benefit in a range of neuropsychiatric conditions, but it is
only approved as an intravenous infusion, which has limited the
scope of its clinical use. Using the Glyph platform, SPT-300
retains the activity and potency of endogenous allopregnanolone in
an oral form and has the potential to capture the breadth of the
natural biological response. In a Phase 2a clinical trial, SPT-300
demonstrated proof-of-concept in a
validated clinical model of anxiety in healthy
volunteers.
Seaport's pipeline also includes
SPT-320,[v] a novel
prodrug of agomelatine being advanced for the treatment of
Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which uses the Glyph platform to
bypass first-pass metabolism by the liver and thus has the
potential to lower its effective dose, reduce liver exposure and
eliminate the need for liver function monitoring that has held back
agomelatine. SPT-348, a prodrug of a
non-hallucinogenic neuroplastogen in development for the treatment
of mood and other neuropsychiatric disorders, leverages Glyph
to create a potential first-in-class
treatment with improved pharmacokinetics and tolerability
compared to conventional
psychedelics. Beyond these programs,
Seaport has multiple discovery and preclinical programs
underway.
The additional members joining the
Seaport Board of Directors are Robert Nelsen (Managing Partner and
Co-founder of ARCH Venture Partners), James Healy, M.D., Ph.D.
(Managing Partner of Sofinnova Investments), Eric Elenko, Ph.D.
(Co-founder and President of PureTech and Co-inventor of KarXT),
and Bharatt Chowrira Ph.D., (newly appointed Chief Executive
Officer of PureTech). Courtney Wallace (Venture Partner at Third
Rock Ventures) is joining as Board Observer.
"I'm thrilled to be partnering again
with this outstanding team, led by Daphne and Steve, to change
lives for people with neuropsychiatric disorders," said Robert
Nelsen, Co-founder and Managing Director of ARCH Venture Partners.
"We were the lead investors in Karuna's Series A and Series B
financing rounds, and I'm excited to partner with these strong
leaders again to deliver on Seaport's proven strategy and robust
pipeline and bring important new medicines to patients."
"Seaport has the potential to
meaningfully change the lives of patients with neuropsychiatric
disorders," said James Healy, M.D., Ph.D., Managing Partner at
Sofinnova Investments. "We've had the pleasure of knowing Steve and
Daphne for a number of years, as one of the investors in Karuna,
and we believe this team has the unique expertise to help solve the
challenges of treating serious mental health conditions. I am eager
to support Seaport as an investor and board member as the team
continues to advance its clinical-stage pipeline of novel
therapeutics."
About the Glyphä Platform
Glyph is Seaport's proprietary
technology platform which uses the lymphatic system to enable and
enhance the oral administration of drugs. With the Glyph platform,
drugs are absorbed like dietary fats through the
intestinal lymphatic system and transported into circulation.
Seaport believes the Glyph technology has
the potential to be widely applied to many therapeutic molecules
that have high first-pass metabolism leading to low bioavailability
and/or side effects, including hepatotoxicity. The Glyph platform
has been refined at Seaport to efficiently generate multiple
therapeutic candidates within the company's pipeline. Seaport has
exclusively licensed this technology from Monash University
based on the pioneering research of the Porter research
group, along with the co-inventors from PureTech Health and
Seaport. The group and its collaborators have published research
in Nature
Metabolism, Frontiers in
Pharmacology and the
Journal of Controlled Release supporting the Glyph platform's capabilities.
About Seaport Therapeutics
Seaport Therapeutics is a
clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company advancing the development
of novel neuropsychiatric medicines in areas of high unmet patient
needs. We have a proven strategy of advancing clinically validated
mechanisms previously held back by limitations we overcome with our
proprietary GlyphTM technology platform. All the
therapeutic candidates in our pipeline of first and best-in-class
medicines are based on the Glyph platform, which
is uniquely designed to enable oral
bioavailability, bypass first-pass metabolism and reduce
hepatotoxicity and other side effects. We
are led by an experienced team that was involved in inventing and
developing KarXT and other neuropsychiatric medicines and are
guided by an extensive network of renowned scientists, clinicians
and key opinion leaders across neurological specialties. For more
information, please visit www.seaporttx.com.
About PureTech
Health
PureTech is a clinical-stage
biotherapeutics company dedicated to giving life to new classes of
medicine to change the lives of patients with devastating diseases.
The Company has created a broad and deep pipeline through its
experienced research and development team and its extensive network
of scientists, clinicians and industry leaders that is being
advanced both internally and through its Founded
Entities. PureTech's R&D engine has resulted in the
development of 28 therapeutics and therapeutic candidates,
including two that have received both U.S. FDA clearance
and European marketing authorization and a third (KarXT) that has
been filed for FDA approval. A number of these programs are being
advanced by PureTech or its Founded Entities in various
indications and stages of clinical development, including
registration enabling studies. All of the underlying programs and
platforms that resulted in this pipeline of therapeutic candidates
were initially identified or discovered and then advanced by
the PureTech team through key validation
points.
For more information,
visit www.puretechhealth.com or
connect with us on X (formerly Twitter) @puretechh.
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking
Statements
This press release contains
forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements contained
in this press release that do not relate to matters of historical
fact should be considered forward-looking statements, including
without limitation those statements that relate to our expectations
around our therapeutic candidates and approach towards addressing
major diseases, and our future prospects, developments, and
strategies. The forward-looking statements are based on current
expectations and are subject to known and unknown risks,
uncertainties and other important factors that could cause actual
results, performance and achievements to differ materially from
current expectations, including, but not limited to, those risks,
uncertainties and other important factors described under the
caption "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the
year ended December 31, 2022 filed with the SEC and in our other
regulatory filings. These forward-looking statements are based on
assumptions regarding the present and future business strategies of
the Company and the environment in which it will operate in the
future. Each forward-looking statement speaks only as at the date
of this press release. Except as required by law and regulatory
requirements, we disclaim any obligation to update or revise these
forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information,
future events or otherwise.
The information contained within
this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside
information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU)
No. 596/2014 which forms part of UK domestic law by virtue of the
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 ('MAR'). Upon the publication
of this announcement via a Regulatory Information Service ('RIS'),
this inside information is now considered to be in the public
domain.
Contact:
PureTech
Public Relations
publicrelations@puretechhealth.com
Investor Relations
IR@puretechhealth.com
UK/EU Media
Ben Atwell, Rob Winder
+44 (0) 20 3727 1000
puretech@fticonsulting.com
US
Media
Nichole Bobbyn
+1 774 278 8273
nichole@tenbridgecommunications.com