Joint-venture Fibrocor tackles fibrosis

The Toronto-based company starts with a capital of US$2,1m, including cash from MaRS Innovation, the commercialisation agent for 15 of Ontario’s leading academic institutions. The company’s goal is to develop first-in-class drugs targeting fibrotic diseases. Evotec will provide all drug discovery activities and will also receive an equity stake.

Fibrocor takes a new approach to understanding and treating fibrosis, bringing together clinical expertise and access to disease tissue with high-throughput molecular analysis infrastructure and expertise in clinically-predictive animal models of fibrosis. The company’s platform is based on discovery of novel targets and dissection of molecular pathways from a well annotated tissue bank of diseased and non-diseased patient samples. Together with Evotec, Fibrocor hopes to optimise a hit to lead by 2018.

The company is being co-founded together with leading scientists and clinicians from world-class academic institutions in Toronto, including diabetic nephropathy specialist Richard Gilbert, co-founder of Australian Fibrotech, which was taken over together with its Phase Ib fibrosis lead FT011 and backup candidates in a US$75m deal by Shire in May 2014. Furthermore, nephrologist Darren Yuen, holder of a patent for applications of the Slit protein ligand of the Robo receptor as anti-fibrotic agent, is on board. Jeffrey Wrana, a senior investigator at Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System most recently deciphered two pathways involved in the antifibrotic activity of the approved AMD treatment verteporfin, opening avenues for repurposing of a clinically used drug.

“Through Fibrocor we have created a transformational partnership with Evotec to translate Toronto’s world-class fibrosis expertise into therapies for patients worldwide”, said Dr Rafi Hofstein, President and CEO of MaRS Innovation. “We are building on our recent success of Triphase in the area of oncology and applying it to a new therapeutic cluster in the area of fibrosis.” The company’s core focus will be to develop novel therapeutics that have the potential to prevent, slow and ultimately reverse the course of fibrosis. Fibrocor said it will collaborate with its academic co-founders to expand access to tissue samples to include relevant tissues, such as lung, liver, kidney, colon and skin.