On a quest to challenge Novo Nordisk in obesity, transpacific startup picks up $70M — and a pair of seasoned execs – Endpoints News

Four years af­ter start­ing Terns Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to­geth­er in search of an elu­sive NASH win, Wei­dong Zhong and Mar­ti­jn Fe­naux are re­unit­ing at a new start­up.

On pa­per, Sci­wind Bio­sciences — which just raised $70 mil­lion in Se­ries C cash — em­ploys a sim­i­lar set­up as Terns: Both have em­braced the transpa­cif­ic mod­el, tak­ing root in Chi­na but plant­i­ng flags in the US.

Wei­dong Zhong

Zhong was tapped to be pres­i­dent of the San Fran­cis­co-based sub­sidiary back in Ju­ly, on top of as­sum­ing the role as chief strat­e­gy of­fi­cer. Weeks lat­er, Fe­naux has been ap­point­ed SVP, non­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and trans­la­tion­al sci­ence at the par­ent com­pa­ny out of Hangzhou — join­ing the team along­side chief sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cer Xin­le Wu, who brings ex­pe­ri­ence run­ning R&D for both Eli Lil­ly and Am­gen in Chi­na.

Where­as Terns is fo­cused on NASH and oth­er liv­er dis­eases, Sci­wind po­si­tions it­self as a spe­cial­ist in meta­bol­ic dis­or­ders. The three lead can­di­dates all con­gre­gate around GLP-1 re­cep­tor ag­o­nism, a mech­a­nism that Sci­wind reck­ons is rel­e­vant across fat­ty liv­er, obe­si­ty and di­a­betes.

Mar­ti­jn Fe­naux

The new in­fu­sion marks Sci­wind’s sec­ond fi­nanc­ing in a year, hav­ing bagged $37 mil­lion in Feb­ru­ary to fu­el the clin­i­cal work un­der­way for XW003 (long-act­ing GLP-1 pep­tide ana­log) in type 2 di­a­betes and obe­si­ty. Topline Phase II da­ta are ex­pect­ed in the sec­ond half of 2022.

To reach those mas­sive mar­kets, the biotech would first have to steer past gi­ant ri­vals like No­vo Nordisk, whose GLP-1 pep­tide ana­log semaglu­tide is al­ready ap­proved in the US for both of those in­di­ca­tions.

Then there’s the fol­low-on XW004, which is de­signed for once dai­ly rather than once week­ly ad­min­is­tra­tion, slat­ed for first-in-hu­man tri­als lat­er this year; and XW014, a pre­clin­i­cal small mol­e­cule GLP-1R ag­o­nist.

But IDG Cap­i­tal, Loy­al Val­ley Cap­i­tal and LYFE Cap­i­tal have no trou­ble be­liev­ing in Sci­wind and founder/CEO Hai Pan, lead­ing the lat­est round.