Tracking the progress of the past Endpoints 11 honorees

When annually proclaiming which startups are poised to become the next big thing in biotech, you ought to track their progress every so often.

In the past five years, Endpoints News has profiled 44 private biotech startups exhibiting the hallmarks of great potential — scientific rigor, leadership gusto, deep pockets, ambition to take on what others haven’t or a fresh take on the industry.

So, in advance of announcing another batch of honorees this week, it’s time to reflect on the status of previous Endpoints 11 winners. (And sorry, Class of 2019, for neglecting to select any companies from your year.)

Half a decade is a short time in drug development, but as the Covid-19 pandemic taught everyone, a lot can happen in five years. And for the startups Endpoints includes on our lists, those early years typically inform the direction they’ll take, whether that’s clinically, financially or commercially.

First, a quick refresher on what’s transpired since the first Endpoints 11 winners were named in 2018. There was a pandemic that sent industry on a high-speed development train. IPOs surged and then almost as quickly ran into a brick wall. There have been layoffs here, there and everywhere; hundreds of drug approvals; legislation that industry says will stifle innovation; and a renaissance for Alzheimer’s, obesity and vaccine work, to name a few.

Previous Endpoints 11 winners are a microcosm of the broader biotech landscape. An analysis of the four prior lists shows:

• We’ve placed a heavy emphasis on oncology, with 28 of 44 companies exploring therapeutics for cancers, including blood diseases. That’s in line with how much of a priority oncology has been in R&D budgets.
• About one-third of the biotechs expressed ambitions or have entered the neuro field.
• We didn’t predict the surge in inflammation and immunology (I&I) interest from recent quarters, with only four of 44 companies clearly laying out plans in autoimmune conditions or the wider I&I space.
• Similar to the industry’s pullback in infectious diseases (prior to Covid-19 and which is happening again), we selected only five biotechs with their sights in this area.
• Even during the first year of the pandemic, we didn’t highlight any infectious disease startups for the 2020 cohort. Perhaps we sought a distraction.

Looking beyond disease areas and into the health of these companies, most are still young and figuring out their paths. Only two have entered the graveyard to date, part of the 2023 doldrums for many private biotech startups. The abrupt shuttering of Tessa Therapeutics served a blow to the seeds for a biotech hub in Singapore, and Codiak’s bankruptcy dissolved high hopes for exosome-based therapies.

Three make approved products, with each exemplifying a different tale of drug development: An all-out, speedy effort for Covid-19 (BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine), a burgeoning cell therapy market with Big Pharma help (Legend’s CAR-T blood cancer treatment Carvykti) and a rethinking of FDA’s accelerated approval (Amylyx’s Relyvrio).

Some have said little to nothing — or disclosed no splashy financing or clinical moves — since making the list. But they’re still raising big heaps of capital, with two of last year’s honorees, Rome Therapeutics and Generate:Biomedicines, disclosing more funding this month.

Even after uncloaking, some drug developers prefer to remain stealthy. Perhaps it’s also a sign of belt-tightening, multiple iterations to the pipeline because of external pressures, or letting science lead the way and thus reprioritizing development plans. Or it’s just a matter of being so early-stage that the kinks are still being ironed out.

It takes time, as is the lesson at Arrakis Therapeutics, which has lined up Big Pharma partnerships, but is laboring through the necessary steps before entering the clinic.

“The key to fully realizing the value of a platform is ultimately figuring out what the killer app is and it takes a long time to do that,” said Michael Gilman, CEO of the 2018 honoree, in an August interview. “But we’ve done it. We’ve solved a zillion problems. We’re learning the rules of engagement for RNA with small molecules.”

These lists are subjective, based on market perceptions and keeping a day-to-day pulse of a constantly evolving industry. Some bets were placed too early. Some chips should’ve been placed elsewhere. Some were spot on (heard of BioNTech?).

“Everyone who does this sort of thing likes to pretend that they can pick which of these fledglings can shoot the rapids of drug development and come out of the white water doing high fives,” Endpoints editor-in-chief and co-founder John Carroll wrote in the first E11 introduction in 2018.

“But the reality is that we all have our good and bad ideas.”

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