Seattle-based biotech Kineta Inc. has completed its reverse merger with Boston-based biotech Yumanity Therapeutics Inc.
With the reverse merger, announced Dec. 19, the combined company now goes by Kineta and trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol KA. The companies first announced plans for the reverse merger in June.
Kineta said it plans to start enrolling patients in January for clinical trials for its lead candidate, a drug aimed at helping cancer patients mount a more effective immune response, called KVA12123.
“We remain on track to report interim safety and efficacy data for KVA12123 in patients with advanced solid tumors in late 2023," Shawn Iadonato, CEO of Kineta, said in a news release. "We greatly appreciate the support of our investors as we continue to deliver on our mission of developing next-generation immunotherapies that transform patients’ lives.”
Kineta also noted it closed a $7.5 million private investment in public equity (PIPE) financing round with the reverse merger, and it expects to close an additional $22.5 million in PIPE financing at the end of March. With the PIPE financing and the $7.8 million remaining cash in Yumanity, according to Kineta, the combined company should have runway through the middle of 2024.
Kineta was founded in 2008. In addition to KVA12123, the company has a drug aimed at exhausted T cells. Kineta said in the release it expects to submit an investigational new drug application for this treatment in the first half of 2024. Reaching the public markets has been multiple years in the making for Kineta, which expressed aspirations to go public as early as 2019.
Yumanity, meanwhile, was founded in 2014 and went public through a separate reverse merger in 2020, but the company's stock steadily declined after that. The company is selling its lead candidate, aimed at Parkinson's disease, and other neuroscience candidates to Johnson & Johnson for $26 million. Kineta will continue Yumanity's work with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal lobar dementia, which Yumanity had been doing with Merck & Co.
Iadonato and the rest of the Kineta management team will lead the combined company. Kineta in June told the Business Journal five scientists from Yumanity are joining Kineta. Yumanity stockholders will now own about 15% of the company, with Kineta stockholders owning roughly 85%.
At the time of the reverse merger announcement in June, Iadonato told the Business Journal Kineta hopes having a variety of drug candidates will help the company be successful.
"I think what's happened to Yumanity, you're seeing that with a lot of companies, especially with a single-asset company that has difficulty with that asset in the clinic. It's very hard for them to pivot anywhere," Iadonato said at the time. "We hope that Kineta's pipeline has enough diversity in it that if one of our assets is not successful, then we have enough opportunity remaining in the pipeline."
