Kaleido Biosciences Emerges From Stealth Mode With $65 Million and Will be Helmed by Fomer Cubist Exec

Kaleido Biosciences Emerges From Stealth Mode With $65 Million and Will be Helmed by Former Cubist Exec September 18, 2017
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

Bedford, Mass. – Kaleido Biosciences emerged from stealth mode with an additional capital raise, hitting a total of $65 million. In addition, the company appointed Mike Bonney as chief executive officer and chairman of the board.

Founded in 2015 by Flagship Pioneering, Kaleido focuses on microbiome-related drug and therapeutic development. The microbiome, which is the trillions of microbes—bacteria, viruses, fungi—that live in and on the human body have specific functions that influence our health, not just negatively, but positively as well. Kaleido is working to develop interventions to enhance those functions and target specific disease processes.

“I truly believe Kaleido—with its deep scientific understanding, R&D engine and pipeline—has the potential to transform the way we treat and prevent disease,” Bonney said in a statement. “The microbiome is an enormous untapped frontier of medicine, and I am confident that Kaleido will lead the way in advancing new products in this area, both therapeutics and scientifically validated consumer products.”

Bonney was previously chief executive officer and board director of Cubist Pharmaceuticals , which was acquired by Merck in 2015 for $9.5 billion. At Cubist, he managed the development and release of Cubicin, a new antibiotic. He also currently serves as chairman of the board of Alnylam, on the board of Celgene , and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.

The Kaleido executive management team include Geoffrey von Maltzahn, co-founder and president and partner at Flagship Pioneering; Jared Silverman, senior vice president of research; Ruth Thieroff-Ekerdt, chief medical officer; Jeffery Moore, senior vice president of finance & operations; Jeremy Buzzard, senior vice president, corporate; Michele Fite, president, food and nutrition division; and Rob Miller, chief scientific officer, food and nutrition division.

The company has a number of products in its pipeline, with a few having moved into early clinical development in rare genetic disorders, metabolic disease, oncology, and opportunistic and multi-drug resistant pathogens. IT boasts that since 2015, it has created more than 3,000 days of human data and advanced three lead products into FIM studies. It has also shown preclinical efficacy in five more indications and expects to have more than 20 clinical studies in the next 18 months.

“After two and a half years of research and development since its founding by Flagship Pioneering in 2015, Kaleido is poised to launch at least four human studies later this fall,” said Noubar Afeyan, senior managing partner and chief executive officer of Flagship Pioneering, in a statement. “We are thrilled to have Mike’s experience and track record of building extraordinary companies and successfully commercializing therapies on board at this exciting time in our corporate lifecycle.”

The company’s board of directors includes Bonney, Noubar Afeyan and Geoffrey von Maltzahn; Brian Baynes, founding board member of Kaleido and venture partner at Flagship; Anthony Quinn, former head of R&D at Synageva ; Ronald Kahn, former president of the Joslin Diabetes Center; Peter Barton Hutt, former chief counsel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA); Robert Connelly, chief executive officer of Axcella Health; and Jonathan McIntyre, senior vice president, PepsiCo Research & Development.

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