Working Like A Machine During The Pandemic, MOMA Taps Investors To Bankroll Its ‘molecular Machines’

For a biotech that opened its lab the week before the pandemic shuttered many offices, MOMA Therapeutics has experienced hardly a blip in operations, so much so that it attracted 15-year Takeda vet Asit Parikh last year as CEO and — amid a wilting financing environment — a $150 million Series B to take on the machine.

So-called molecular machines, that is. The Third Rock Ventures-incubated startup will use the proceeds to bankroll continued work on the class of enzymes that “generate force and motion within cells,” Parikh told Endpoints News.

About half of the nearly 500 enzymes in this class “have been linked to some form of disease,” the CEO said, noting some are known for unwinding DNA to aid its replication, others for degrading proteins to assist in shuttling throughout the cell.

The enzymes “grind like a work cycle, if you will,” Parikh said. Similar to the seemingly non-stop work that MOMA’s 54 employees have been putting into the startup, the CEO said.

“People started working nights and weekends. Some of our junior scientists, one of them pulled a 24-hour shift on a Sunday to keep the projects going and to keep the science moving,” the CEO said. “And it’s thanks to their hard work, but also their risk tolerance and sacrifices and just wanting to get some of this stuff done, that we are able to have a strong foundation that’s gotten us to where we are today.”

That work is geared toward MOMA’s targeted mid-2024 clinical entry, as the biotech is boosting its team by another 10 positions this year and more in 2023 to fuel three precision oncology programs, Parikh said. All three programs revolve around a common thread: DNA repair, the CEO added.

“The ideal would be yesterday, but that’s probably not going to happen now,” Parikh jokingly said of MOMA entering its first human trial.

As for the focus on oncology — out of a vast field of opportunities with molecular machines, which influences cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, immunology and other areas — MOMA decided it was the right path because of the swath of genetic cancer databases to tap into.

“The premise to understand these molecular machines at a level that nobody else does, and through the intense focus on just one class, have a benefit on human suffering from that,” Parikh said.

Now, 25 months after unveiling itself, MOMA is out with its second big round of financing to set the biotech apart from others in its native Cambridge, MA, and elsewhere in the drug development landscape. And it only took a few months for Parikh and team to gather up the funds after starting the raise in mid-January.

“The key for MOMA is to be ready for really any possible forward scenario, which is the market improves somewhat, market stays the same, or market gets even tougher than it is today, which is hard to imagine, but not inconceivable,” Parikh said. He previously helmed Takeda’s GI unit after leading Entyvio clinical studies.

Goldman Sachs led the round and was joined by other new investors Section 32, Pavilion Capital, Invus and LifeSci Venture Partners. MOMA’s entire Series A investor lineup also participated, including Third Rock, Nextech Invest, Cormorant, Casdin Capital, Rock Springs Capital, Creacion Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments and others kept under wraps.

How are top investors navigating the longest biotech bear market in almost 20 years? RBC Capital Markets Healthcare Desk Sector Strategist Chris McCarthy discusses key fundamentals, macro-awareness and the continued impact of COVID with HealthCor’s Ben Snedeker and Omega Funds founder Otello Stampacchia.

Biotech indexes may be down, but both Snedeker and Otello Stampacchia, Ph.D., Founder and Managing Director of Omega Funds, see opportunities in the market. In Snedeker’s opinion, investors need to seek out companies with the potential for meaningful revenue growth, particularly those that are mispriced in the current bear market.

Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

Are you headed to the BIO confab in San Diego next month? If so, do consider joining Endpoints for our return to in-person panels since the pandemic began. But don’t worry if you won’t be there — we do have plenty of virtual panels lined up. Learn more here.