√ Oncorus plots early-stage plant in Boston area as it walks I-O candidate through the clinic – Endpoints News – Reviews

Buoyed by what it called a suc­cess­ful 2020, Mass­a­chu­setts-based On­corus has snared a lease in the Boston area to lock down a man­u­fac­tur­ing site for its clin­i­cal-stage on­col­o­gy port­fo­lio.

On­corus, a five-year-old com­pa­ny, an­nounced Mon­day that it signed a 15-year lease to build an 88,000-square-foot GMP vi­ral im­munother­a­py clin­i­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in An­dover, MA.

The com­pa­ny said in a press re­lease that it an­tic­i­pates the first phase of the fa­cil­i­ty will be fin­ished by the end of 2021 and will pri­or­i­tize process de­vel­op­ment and qual­i­ty con­trol. Once ful­ly op­er­a­tional — pro­ject­ed in 2023 — On­corus plans to have GMP mul­ti-prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties avail­able to pro­duce clin­i­cal-grade vi­ral im­munother­a­pies for in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al new drug and clin­i­cal stud­ies.

On­corus pres­i­dent and CEO Ted Ash­burn, who hopped over to the start­up from Mod­er­na in 2018, said in a press re­lease that the fa­cil­i­ty was made pos­si­ble by its 2020 suc­cess­es. The com­pa­ny ini­ti­at­ed a study of sol­id tu­mor can­cer im­munother­a­py ON­CR-177, signed a clin­i­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion and sup­ply agree­ment with Mer­ck for ther­a­peu­tics, and launched an $87 mil­lion IPO.

“Now we’re thrilled to an­nounce that we’ve signed a lease for our planned man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty, which will play a cen­tral role in en­abling us to ad­vance our mis­sion to re­al­ize the full promise of vi­ral im­munother­a­py for can­cer pa­tients,” Ash­burn said. “Op­er­a­tional and man­u­fac­tur­ing scale-up will be a strate­gic pri­or­i­ty for On­corus go­ing for­ward.”

Not all fi­nan­cial de­tails of the new fa­cil­i­ty are pub­licly avail­able, an On­corus spokesper­son told End­points News, but the com­pa­ny did of­fer some in­sight in its S1 fil­ings pri­or to its Oc­to­ber IPO.

Rough­ly $18.9 mil­lion of the IPO pro­ceeds will be used for cap­i­tal and op­er­a­tional ex­pen­di­tures, as well as per­son­nel at the new fa­cil­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to the fil­ing. On­corus al­so dis­closed that it will need an­oth­er $30 mil­lion in cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­tures for the fa­cil­i­ty build­out.

In ad­di­tion to its IPO fi­nanc­ing, On­corus land­ed a $89.6 mil­lion Se­ries B in 2019 led by Cowen and Per­cep­tive Ad­vi­sors for its work in the on­colyt­ic virus space. And as of Oc­to­ber, the biotech has spent $96.3 mil­lion.

The fa­cil­i­ty con­struc­tion is the lat­est sign that the biotech will be a play­er to watch in the months and years to come. Af­ter Ash­burn jumped on board from Mod­er­na, for ex­am­ple, On­corus con­tin­ued to pull from the man­u­fac­tur­ing gi­ant when Steve Harbin came on­line as COO in De­cem­ber.

Harbin was a big get for the rel­a­tive­ly new biotech, as he served as Mod­er­na’s chief sus­tain­abil­i­ty of­fi­cer, head of cor­po­rate fa­cil­i­ties and head of the mR­NA biotech’s man­u­fac­tur­ing site be­fore re­tir­ing in 2019. He al­so has cred­its from roles at Eli Lil­ly and bio­Mérieux.