Rockville’s Immunomic Therapeutics Inc. is on track to go public later this year, after Covid-19 threw a wrench in the vaccine maker’s initial timeline.
But a few things must happen first.
So while juggling clinical trials, the immunotherapy company is hiring aggressively, expanding its Montgomery County footprint and eyeing more funding ahead of an initial public offering slated for the second half of this year.
The hiring picture
The 40-person company has been “on the prowl” and hiring “continuously” as it advances multiple cancer therapeutics through the clinic, said Bill Hearl, CEO and founder of ITI. It’s aiming to reach about 75 employees this year, which could be tough “with the way things are going,” he said.
“The real challenge,” he said, “has just been getting staff, and how hard it is to not only recruit new employees, but you really have to go to extra lengths to keep the ones you’ve got.”
The biotech is both looking to launch more clinical trials and prepare to move its program in glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, toward the commercialization phase. So Immunomic is hiring for positions including regulatory, clinical operations and quality assurance, as well as deeper in cell therapy.
But companies in the cell therapy space locally such as Kite Pharma are also hiring large numbers of employees, Hearl said, “so it’s made finding the candidates that we want, particularly locally, very difficult.”
But that Immunomic is looking to move toward a public offering could help create an environment of excitement, he said. The company also has an edge, he added, because “there’s a lot of people who have been touched by glioblastoma, so I think that we’ve attracted a certain number of people who have an interest in being active in that space.”
The expansion
ITI is also growing its headquarters at 15010 Broschart Road, taking over another 15,000 square feet for a total footprint of 40,000 square feet, Hearl said. The move is expected to happen over the next year and a half, but hinges on supply chain issues because “everything is delayed,” he said.
The expanded lease with Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. “positions us pretty well for the next two years, and then I think we’ll start talking to ARE about where to find our next home,” Hearl said, adding that “under the best circumstances” that would mean adding a wing to its existing building for another 20,000 to 30,000 square feet.
Immunomic pushes these plans forward after raising more than $77 million in funding, more than expected, from 2020 to 2021. Much of that funding came from Korean investment group HLB. They’re planning to work together to establish a brain cancer research and treatment center in Seoul, South Korea, in the second half of this year, Hearl said. “But of course, that all requires additional capitalization.”
To that end, ITI will need to raise roughly $25 million to $40 million in interim funding “to put us in a position so when the IPO markets kind of rebound, we’re good to go,” he said, “and then look at being IPO ready in the third or fourth quarter of this year.”
The route to market
Immunomic first intended to enter the public market in early 2021, but the pandemic “really had a negative impact” on the business “because it dramatically reduced the pace of enrollment at our clinical sites,” Hearl said. That, and delays related to some unexpected regulatory issues, led the company to push back that target date.
But now, the company’s cell therapy for glioblastoma is running a phase 2 study after positive phase 1 results in newly diagnosed patients. And strong data from this trial would both help inform next steps for a phase 3 — and benefit ITI’s public debut.
Hearl’s goal, he said, is to try to get that therapeutic into the hands of patients in 2024.
Immunomic is also running an early-stage study for glioblastoma patients ineligible for its other trial because they’ve already received their first rounds of chemotherapy, the standard of care. That opened in October. The company is separately initiating a phase 1 trial in Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare and aggressive skin cancer, expecting to dose the first patient in early April.
Hearl, an entrepreneur with a doctorate in biochemistry, started Immunomic Therapeutics in 2006 with the late Dr. Tom August, who specialized in pharmacology and molecular sciences at Johns Hopkins University.
