Roche paid $1.7 billion for Ignyta in 2017. The man who founded that cancer startup, Jonathan Lim, started Erasca the next year, in July 2018, with a stated aim of erasing cancer. Few biotech founders get a second shot at a company with that kind of exit behind them.
BioPharma Dive described Lim as a serial biotech entrepreneur best known for Ignyta. Its lead drug, entrectinib, later won approval for a rare form of lung cancer and is sold as Rozlytrek. Erasca’s own account adds that Rozlytrek became the first drug to collect breakthrough designations from the FDA, the European Medicines Agency and Japan’s regulator, a “triple crown” in the company’s words.
A founder who came from venture capital
Lim is a physician by training. Erasca’s website calls him a “physician-turned-venturepreneur” at City Hill and ARCH Venture, and says he has led six biotechnology companies, with seven products launched among them. He also negotiated Halozyme’s ENHANZE drug delivery deals with Roche/Genentech and Baxter.
He did not build Erasca alone. Michael Varney came in as chair of R&D after a long run at Genentech, where he was named head of research and early development in 2015 and sat on the Roche executive committee. He retired from Genentech in July 2020. David Chacko, a former principal at Versant Ventures, joined as chief business officer in 2019 and took over as chief financial officer in 2020.
The money and the target
Lim raised more than $300 million before Erasca went public in 2021 with a $345 million initial public offering, according to BioPharma Dive. The company is based in San Diego.
Its focus is the RAS/MAPK pathway, which Lim has said is among the most frequently altered in cancer, affecting more than 5 million new patients a year worldwide. In August 2022 Erasca signed a five-year agreement with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to test its experimental drugs in non-small cell lung cancer, gastrointestinal cancers and other tumors.
At the time, the lead drug ERAS-007 was in Phase 2 trials. ERAS-601 was in several studies, including colorectal cancer and HPV-negative head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. The two were meant, Lim said, to shut down the pathway “at multiple critical nodes.”
The pair also planned work on an earlier drug aimed at one KRAS mutation. KRAS was long labeled “undruggable.” Amgen’s Lumakras was the first drug approved against it, though it hits a different change in the gene than Erasca’s candidate.
Sources
- Biotech Erasca taps MD Anderson to help advance cancer drug work | BioPharma Dive
- People – Erasca (company's own statement)
