Adagio Shareholders Overwhelmingly Elected
Mithril’s Three High-Quality Director Candidates To the Adagio
Board
Board Transformation will Advance Company’s
Mission to Prevent and Treat COVID19 and Other Infectious
Diseases
Mithril Capital Management LLC (“Mithril”), a founding investor
in and the leader of a consortium of investors that represented
approximately 49% of the outstanding shares of Adagio Therapeutics,
Inc. (Nasdaq: ADGI) (“Adagio”), today issued a letter to fellow
Adagio shareholders thanking them for helping to ensure Adagio is
best-positioned to advance its public health mission and build on
the outstanding technology that underpins its platform.
The letter follows the success of the Mithril-led group’s proxy
campaign, which resulted in three new high-quality industry experts
being elected to the Adagio’s Board of Directors after receiving
more than 90% of the shareholder votes cast at Adagio’s Annual
Meeting of Stockholders.
The full text of the letter can be found below.
Dear Fellow Shareholders,
Earlier this year, the major founding investors of Adagio
Therapeutics (Nasdaq:ADGI) recognized the importance of renewed
focus on Adagio’s original mission, and of its execution with an
alacrity, adaptability, and capital efficiency that honors the
technical talent embedded in Adagio’s team, the unmet ongoing need
for durable solutions to the scourge of COVID19, and the faith
placed in the company by its investors. We joined together to
nominate three high-quality candidates to the Board of Directors,
who we believe will help advance the mission in creative and
impactful ways that build on the outstanding technology underlying
the Adagio platform, and who can help the company move quickly to
execute on its core mission. We also proposed measures to
additionally align Adagio with shareholder interests.
We thank you, our fellow shareholders, for the overwhelming
support you gave these proposals. You have given this company and
its talented team an unimpeachable and energizing mandate to
execute.
Almost two years ago Adagio Therapeutics launched with a clear
mission: deploy the world’s most advanced biological discovery
technology to make drugs against important viral targets, including
SARS-CoV-2. The belief then, as it remains now, was that this
severe respiratory coronavirus would pose an untenable challenge to
the human immune system, and hence the entire human species, until
tools unlimited by the immune system could be brought to bear. To
do so, Adagio aimed to create the leading infectious diseases
platform equipped with the world’s best antibody discovery
technology.
The last two years have also witnessed the impressive effort to
develop and deploy COVID19 vaccines, and we have seen relatively
broad vaccine uptake. But we have also noted the immunologic
limitations of vaccination as SARS-CoV-2 continues to mutate. A
vaccine that is required two or three times a year, however
effective, starts to seem like a suboptimal therapeutic; but a
high-quality therapeutic given prophylactically once a year starts
to seem like a better vaccine.
At this writing, in the United States our society is presented
with the potential for a fourth or fifth booster dose in the face
of rapidly waning antibody titers and waning interest in further
boosting. While the abatement of COVID19-related public health
measures represents a long-awaited restoration of our economic and
civic life, we are reminded of our duty to redouble efforts to
protect those who cannot access the benefits of even the available
vaccines. These diverse, vulnerable populations include
immunocompromised patients, very young children, and those who
cannot receive vaccination for medical reasons.
Vaccines and naturally created antibodies against SARS-CoV-2
face limitations intrinsic to human immune biology, as well as
human psychology. While developing vital but imperfect resilience
via a combination of vaccination and naturally acquired immunity,
we continue to face an unacceptable ongoing rate of severe disease,
death, and multisystem manifestations of long COVID19. For example,
recent studies suggest that even mild COVID19 is a risk factor for
life-changing complications such as deep vein thromboses, pulmonary
emboli, and bleeding. Meanwhile, immune imprinting (or “original
antigenic sin”) means that after two years of COVID19 we, as a
population, have developed a complex, heterogeneous immunity to
which new variants can be much less susceptible.
Here’s the bottom line: To be truly free, to return to a state
of epidemiological equilibrium that more resembles our pre-2020
lives we must create a standing repository of safe, effective,
off-the-shelf prophylactics and therapies that are broadly
protective, more convenient, more durable, and more accessible for
a larger population than afforded by currently available solutions.
This expanded set of choices would represent a necessary, positive
sum outcome wholly compatible with existing tools. And such a
standing repository would ideally anticipate and address not just
novel SARS-CoV-2 variants, but also other respiratory viruses that
operate at lower social burden but share similar features,
including RSV and influenza.
To that end, Adagio represents the “adaptive durable response”
platform the world needed at the outset of this pandemic and, in
fact, has never needed more than now. Adagio’s technology platform
is equipped with unique rapid-discovery and superior engineering
capabilities, and can therefore generate a suite of durable
solutions to protect against rapidly mutating viral threats such as
COVID19. This mission is bold and it is broad, and the competitive
position of Adagio technology is unique in the biopharmaceutical
industry. The recently disclosed pivotal data for adintrevimab has
given us a glimpse of the power of just a single engineering
campaign.
As humanists, technologists, and venture capital investors, we
believe that patient, mission-driven capital is best directed to
solve the hardest problems; to support the best technologies and
scientific genius to create more, and better, choices. Going
forward, Adagio Therapeutics must grow into a strategic and
operational posture that matches the scope of the opportunity and
the power of its platform. Patients in need everywhere, and the
company’s shareholders, deserve no less. Our successful proxy
effort was intended to help advance this mission, and we will
continue to monitor developments at Adagio with a view to
supporting brisk progress.
We could not be more enthusiastic about the extraordinary
opportunity that Adagio is presented with.
With best regards, Ajay Royan Managing General Partner and
Founder Mithril Capital Management LLC
Further Reading
June 29, 2022 PNAS A broad and potent neutralization epitope in
SARS-related coronaviruses June 27, 2022 Dr. Eric Topol’s Ground
Truths The BA.5 Story June 27, 2022 Nature Fast-evolving COVID
variants complicate vaccine updates June 23, 2022 Nature What
Omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 variants mean for the pandemic April 6,
2022 BMJ Risks of deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and
bleeding after covid-19: nationwide self-controlled cases series
and matched cohort study
About Mithril Capital
Mithril Capital is a family of long-term venture capital funds
agnostic to sector and geography. We invest and partner with teams
who use technology to build valuable and lasting businesses, often
in industries long overdue for change. Founded in 2012 by Ajay
Royan with Peter Thiel, Mithril is headquartered in Austin,
Texas.
The statements made and opinions expressed herein solely reflect
the personal views of the author and do not reflect the opinions,
views and beliefs of Adagio or any other person. This is not a
recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any securities of
Adagio. None of the author, Mithril or any of their respective
affiliates make any representations regarding the accuracy or
completeness of any of the information included herein, or any
other representations. Individuals should consult with their own
professional advisors prior to making any investment decisions with
respect to Adagio. This is being provided to you for informational
purposes only and does not constitute legal or other advice and may
not be relied on for any purposes whatsoever.
The statements made and opinions expressed herein contain
“forward-looking statements.” Specific forward-looking statements
can be identified by the fact that they do not relate strictly to
historical or current facts and can be identified by the use of,
without limitation, words such as “may,” “will,” “expects,”
“believes,” “anticipates,” “plans,” “estimates,” “projects,”
“targets,” “forecasts,” “seeks,” “would,” “could” or the negative
of such terms or other variations on such terms or comparable
terminology. Similarly, statements that describe any objectives,
plans or goals are forward-looking. The forward-looking statements
are based on current intent, belief, expectations, estimates and
projections regarding Adagio and projections regarding the industry
in which it operates. These statements are not guarantees of future
performance and involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other
factors that are difficult to predict and that could cause actual
results to differ materially. Accordingly, you should not rely upon
forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results and
actual results may vary materially from what is expressed in or
indicated by the forward-looking statements. This cautionary
statement is applicable to all forward-looking statements contained
herein.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220705005295/en/
Jonathan Gasthalter/Amanda Shpiner/Mark Semer Gasthalter &
Co. 212-257-4170
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