A Cambridge startup is eyeing a new method of treating solid tumors: combining targeted therapies and immunotherapies into a single antibody.
Bicara, which launched Monday with $40 million, is crafting an approach in which a single drug hitches onto a specific target on a tumor cell, then attacks it with an immune modulator. The startup's leaders describe it as on-site precision immunotherapy, and they believe it has the potential to fight tumors that have developed resistance to other targeted treatments.
"It brings the right immunotherapy to the tumor microenvironment, almost like a zip code," said Claire Mazumdar, Bicara's CEO. "It's a dual-action biologics approach, where one arm gets you to the tumor, and the other arm is some kind of immunotherapy."
Bicara's lead molecule is a drug called BCA101, a bifunctional antibody designed to target head and neck cancers. Unlike most young startups, Bicara is emerging from stealth with its drug already in the clinic. BCA101 entered Phase 1/2 clinical trials last June to be evaluated both as a single agent and in combination with checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab.
The study, which is expected to enroll about 300 participants, is in the late stages of dose escalation. Bicara expects to enter dose expansion studies in the second half of 2021 and have a clinical update around the same time, Mazumdar said.
Bicara was spun out of India biotech Biocon Ltd., a large company that has historically focused on biosimilars. All of the $40 million cash infusion comes from Biocon and is intended to advance the startup through BCA101's clinical trials and develop other programs currently in the pipeline. Mazumdar said the startup is planning on filing another two INDs in mid-2022.
The startup employs 15 people in Cambridge and plans to grow to 25 over the next two years, Mazumdar said. Another 65 employees are in Bangalore, India, where Biocon is based.
While Bicara is currently comfortable operating on the cash runway provided by its parent company, Mazumdar said the startup may broaden its "syndicate of investors" down the line. Mazumdar herself comes from Third Rock Ventures, where she spent two years as a senior associate before moving on to Rheos Medicine, a Cambridge biotech launched by the venture firm in 2018. Bicara's president, Ryan Cohlhepp, comes from the same background, having spent a collective six-plus years at Third Rock and Rheos before joining Bicara. Cohlepp was previously at Takeda Oncology.
"To be in a company-building mode with a Phase 1 clinical asset is pretty unique," Cohlepp said. "Having the support of Biocon, the asset that we have in the clinic and still be in company formation and company-building — there are few companies that have all those bases at this stage of the company's life."
