We first wrote about Character Bio a few years ago when we led the Series A. From the start, we were excited by their unique model for drug discovery and development—one grounded in direct partnerships with providers and patients to build real-world, multi-modal, longitudinal datasets that fuel therapeutic innovation. That thesis rings as true today as it did 3 years ago. Now, with $93 million in Series B financing, Character will advance two lead programs into clinical development and continue to advance a precision medicine approach to patients with age-related ocular diseases.
At the time of our initial investment in Character, we saw the enormous promise of using curated, longitudinal data assets across the drug development continuum. Despite the clear evidence of the power of genetics in improving the probability of translational success (the most recent estimates point to a 2.6x greater probability of success for drugs that target genes that have genetic support) these data assets aren’t abundant and rich across therapeutic areas. The UK Biobank (and related, though smaller initiatives) are tremendous resources; however, the depth of phenotypes are limited. A GWAS is really only as good as its phenotypes, and this analysis needs to go well-beyond simply the presence or absence of a disease.
The depth, rigor, and scale of the real-world dataset was, and remains, part of Character’s unique differentiation, enabled by direct relationships with patients and providers. Since the Series A, the Character team has substantially matured the platform, progressed two homegrown programs to peri-clinical stages (in age-related macular degeneration), and established a broad-ranging collaboration with arguably the biggest player in ophthalmology, Bausch and Lomb. The two programs on foot target unique aspects of AMD pathology:
With the proceeds of Series B, Character will be taking these lead programs to the clinic. Their vision from the start has been to translate the power of genetics into a development strategy that 1) better stratifies patients that more likely to respond to the treatment, and 2) enrolls patients that are at higher risk of progression utilizing polygenic risk (some of these ideas are discussed in Fahed et al). The potential of these optimizations are compelling - faster, more efficient trials in large, heterogenous indications - but largely have been elusive to implement at scale. For both of the lead programs, Character has developed proprietary pathway-specific polygenic risk scores to identify relevant patients for the treatment.
To achieve this vision of patient-driven drug development, Character has compiled an unparalleled multi-disciplinary team that harnesses expertise across disciplines from statistical genetics and computational biology, to patient advocacy and provider partnerships, to data integration and machine learning, and of course drug discovery to development.
We are humbled by the opportunity in front of us to bring precision to drug development in progressive ocular diseases. We couldn’t imagine a better team than Character to lead the way on this journey, and we’re pleased to partner with a great group of co-investors, both old (Catalio, KdT, Section32) and new (Luma, aMoon, Bausch + Lomb, Jefferson Life Sciences).
