Summary
Agios Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:AGIO) is a large biotechnology company with a pipeline of rare diseases drugs that recently sold off their cancer drug pipeline for $2B ($1.8B cash) with royalties. This event has created an event to buy a well-financed clinical stage company led by a seasoned team at fair prices.
The company was founded in 2008 to commercialize research centered around cancer metabolism. Agios' platform was based on work from Lewis Cantley at Harvard Medical School, Craig Thompson who was at UPenn at the time, and Tak Mak from the University of Toronto. From their leading research in cancer metabolism, mainly discoveries from Cantley's Lab who discovered metabolic enzymes that drove several cancers, Agios has been able to drive 2 drug approvals and build a business set up to continue successful development of new medicines for patients.
At founding, the biological premise of Agios was that metabolism increases in cancer cells as they consume more nutrients and maximize their growth rates. As a result, the company focused on starting off drugging cancer metabolism through a wide range of mechanisms: glycolysis, fatty acid metabolism (FAM), autophagy, among others. Over two years, Agios centered the company's pipeline around a breakthrough discovery made in 2010 on the role of the isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) 1 and 2 in cancer: Cancer-associated IDH mutations: biomarker and therapeutic opportunities and The Common Feature of Leukemia-Associated IDH1 and IDH2 Mutations Is a Neomorphic Enzyme Activity Converting α-Ketoglutarate to 2-Hydroxyglutarate. IDH1/2 are enzymes involved in metabolism and found to have specific mutations in a wide range of cancers. This discovery provided Agios an advantage to develop first-in-class drugs for mutant IDH enzymes before others. This unique mechanism-of-action (MoA), empowered Agios to close an iconic deal with Celgene the same year, in 2010, driving forward two drug approvals: Idhifa (partnered
