Bright Peak Therapeutics announced a $90 million Series C, though its scientific focus and pipeline looks different than it did three years ago.
Shortly after the company raised a $107 million Series B in 2021, Bright Peak executives realized that another program might be more innovative than its lead compound targeting IL-2, CEO Fred Wiklund told Endpoints News. The company then began to pivot away from the IL-2 candidate and toward an “ADC-like” approach to developing what it calls an “immunoconjugate” therapy.
“The data were very competitive in a preclinical setting” for the IL-2 program, Wiklund said. “But we said, ‘Should we be, at this point, fourth or fifth to clinic with something slightly nuanced? Is that what biotech companies should be doing in any market?’”
Bright Peak is now focused on a compound called BPT567 that targets PD-1 and stimulates IL-18 signals. It’s designed similarly to antibody-drug conjugates, Wiklund said, in the sense that it has an antibody, linker and payload.
By linking a checkpoint inhibitor to a cytokine, the company believes it can break through the tumor microenvironment in cold tumors where PD-1 drugs like Merck’s Keytruda have had less success. Bright Peak opted for IL-18, in particular, because it expands T cells within the colder tumor microenvironments, allowing a patient’s immune system to attack cancer cells more easily, Wiklund said.
“It’s three things. Raise the bar where PD-1s are approved, but probably suboptimal. Find new indications where PD-1s are not approved, with typically less T cell-infiltrated cancers,” Wiklund said. “And number three, can we salvage patients in the post-PD-1 setting?”
It’s also a category with few big players. There are no FDA-approved IL-18 drugs. Gilead licensed an anti-IL-18 program from Compugen in December, though that is a monotherapy and still preclinical, like BPT567.
Bright Peak is planning to test BPT567 in a Phase 1/2a trial in solid tumors with about 100 patients, mostly coming from regions like Eastern Europe and Australia where PD-1s are not as readily available as in the US. The study is expected to begin in the second half of this year, and Wiklund thinks accelerated approvals are possible for indications in which PD-1 inhibitors aren’t already the standard of care.
“For the cohorts where checkpoints are approved, the next step would have to be a randomized trial versus PD-1,” Wiklund said. “If you go after a colder tumor, there are examples of these where PD-1s have been tried but have, frankly, a 0% response rate. There, they do provide a path for potential expedited approval.”
The financing, its first in three years and led by Johnson & Johnson’s strategic VC arm JJDC, gives Bright Peak three years of runway, Wiklund said. To take BPT567 past the current trial, the company is considering partnerships, equity or a combination of both to get more cash. If equity is in the mix, an IPO might be on the table, he said.
Versant, which also backed the Series C, launched Bright Peak in 2020 out of its Ridgeline Therapeutics Discovery Engine in Switzerland.