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On 18th October, Mablink Bioscience (“Mablink”) –Lyon, France– announced an agreement to be acquired by Eli Lilly and Company (“Lilly”). Mablink was created in December 2018, raised a total of EUR31m in equity and was readily acquired at pre-clinical stage. What are the key factors explaining this success?
Having been a member of Mablink’s Scientific Advisory Board, I would like to share the success factors I see behind the stunning success of this company developing next-generation Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs) and comment about the potential value of the transaction.
First, there was a solid science based around PSARLink™ Mablink’s proprietary technology for linker that conjugate the monoclonal antibody and the toxic payload. The benefit of this linker is an improved therapeutic index thanks to a “restored” ADC solubility providing a prolonged blood half-life, an improved drug exposure along efficacy, and a reduced off-target toxicity.
Second, the R&D strategy has been focused towards generating MBK103 a lead compound relying on validated antibody target (Folate Receptor alpha) and a well selected payload (exatecan, topoisomerase I inhibitor). The strategy has been sound with the selection of initial indication with solid tumours rather liquid tumours as it was trendy few years ago. Beyond MBK103, there is an existing drug pipeline with potential.
Third, the Mablink’s team has been steadily build-up during the recent years with required talents in science, business and corporate. The last recruited position has been the often hard-to-find CMO with Dr. Pejvack Motlagh in June 2023.
Fourth, in addition to science and team, two large financing rounds with well known VC funds were raised and totalled EUR35m in two years on top of several public grants. This shows the solid work of two of the founders Jean-Guillaume Lafay (CEO) and Warren Viricel (CSO).
Observers know that good science, talents and financing are essential to start-up success but not sufficient. More factors came into play:
- ADC are a very hot anti-cancer drug modality making it easier to raise money and achieving deal but intense competition goes along. As such, the leadership of Mablink, a platform technology platform, has been able to validate enough its technology to get financing at high pace and to push towards a Minimal Viable Unit (MVU) development. In other words, Mablink leadership rightfully bet on the linker innovation as other ADC company did in the past (e.g. Seagen, previously Seattle Genetics) instead of losing focus and trying developing a lead program with a novel target or a novel payload on top of PSARLink.
- The quality and speed of execution by leadership has been achieved through previous experience of co-founders and also discipline and solid organisation.
- The business model based on technology platform has been shown to provide opportunity of preclinical trade sale. In contrast to common belief, technology platform companies in oncology are quite often acquired before entering into clinical development stage as shown by de Bloeme et al (2023).
To summarize, Mablink early transaction is not a mere success like a floating boat along the tide. This success is the result of solid company work by many in a deal-rich health care sector.
The announcement of Mablink acquisition by Lilly has been yet somewhat unusual as the acquisition is pending and no financial figures were disclosed. The stated explanation on the required approval from the French Ministry of Economy brings only the context of this public announcement. This leads to the “$64,000 Question”: what is the value of the deal ?
Beyond listed equity financial analyst speculations, one can recall the study by de Bloeme et al (2023) showing mean values of relevant deals in oncology, including preclinical deals with technology platform totalling $768 million including $43 million upfront, and acquisition deals totalling $359 million including $130 million upfront.
Let’s wait for Lilly financial results on Q4 2023 to know more on Mablink trade sale !
Note :
Only publicly known success factors are described here. More can be known when visiting the Mablink website.
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