BridgeBio Spins-Out Set of Assets into Newly Formed GondolaBio

Rare Daily Staff

BridgeBio said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it had entered into a transaction to form and fund GondolaBio, a joint venture that will research, develop, and manufacture drugs including ones BridgeBio has contributed to it.

A group of venture capital firms have committed $300 million in a tranched financing to fund GondolaBio. BridgeBio, which owns 45 percent of the new company, contributed early-stage clinical and pre-clinical stage programs in the areas of erythropoietic protoporphyria, alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, and tuberous sclerosis complex.

The investors in GondolaBio include Viking Global Investors, Patient Square Capital, Sequoia Capital, Frazier Life Sciences, Cormorant Asset Management, Aisling Capital, and an entity owned by BridgeBio CEO Neil Kumar.

The transactions were approved and recommended to the BridgeBio board of directors by a special committee of independent and disinterested directors of the company.

BridgeBio’s stake in GondolaBio will be subject to reduction as additional tranches of capital contributions are funded.

The move continues an effort by BridgeBio to pare down its pipeline and focus on late-stage assets in development. In May, it spun out a set of oncology assets into BridgeBio Oncology Therapeutics, which raised $200 million.

The company’s lead experimental therapy acoramidis is pending an approval decision from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that is expected in November. Acoramidis is a small molecule therapy for people with the rare heart condition ATTR cardiomyopathy, a condition that causes the accumulation of amyloid fibrils in the heart and causes impaired function.

In March, BridgeBio licensed European rights for Acoramidis in ATTR-CM to Bayer for $310 million upfront and milestone payments with tiered royalties beginning in the low-30s as a percent of sales.

Photo: Neil Kumar, CEO of BridgeBio