BOSTON– EveryONE Medicines, the first biotech company solely dedicated to developing personalized genetic medicines, announced the appointment of Kent Rogers as Chief Executive Officer and Josh Ofman, MD, MSHS as Chairman of the Board.
The company was founded with seed financing from Khosla Ventures, GV, Third Rock Ventures, and a private healthcare investment fund, to develop a scalable pathway for treatments tailored to individual patients with unique genetic mutations. EveryONE Medicines is initially focused on antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) for rare neurological diseases and plans to expand to additional modalities over time to treat multiple disease types.
ASOs are currently being used for numerous rare disorders, where “rare” by definition is 1 in 200,000 people in the US and 1 in 2,000 people in Europe. The need to develop treatments for rare disease is highlighted by the fact that for over 90% of rare disorders, there is no targeted treatment available and 70-80% of rare disorders are caused by alterations in single genes where ASO therapies could provide disease modifying benefits.
Inspired by the story of Mila, EveryONE Medicines was founded on the commitment to make individualized medicines commercially viable and in turn accessible to anyone who can benefit from them. Mila was diagnosed with a rare, fatal neurodegenerative disease. In a race against time, Dr. Timothy Yu of Boston Children’s Hospital developed Milasen, an ASO tailored to Mila’s unique mutation, making her the first person in the world to receive a personalized treatment designed for just one person. Inspired by this success, Mila’s mother, Julia Vitarello, co-founded EveryONE Medicines to make this approach a mainstream way of treating patients with rare diseases.
“Our business model is unique to the industry, leveraging state-of-the-art genome sequencing, AI-driven innovation and advanced manufacturing capabilities, as well as growing support from regulators to provide answers to neurological diseases that impact the few or the one versus the many,” said Kent Rogers, CEO at EveryONE Medicines. “By rethinking traditional drug development, we are addressing a critical unmet need for patients with rare genetic disorders, offering hope where there was previously no viable pathway to develop novel targeted therapies in time. We’re committed to creating a future where individualized medicines become routine.”
“We are thrilled to welcome Kent as CEO of EveryONE Medicines,” said Dr. Nessan Bermingham, partner at Khosla Ventures. “With over 30 years of experience in product commercialization, supply chain logistics and market access strategy, Kent brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the team. His proven track record in life sciences and innovative approach to solving patient access challenges will be invaluable as we work to bring personalized genetic therapies to patients with rare diseases.”
Regulatory authorities in the US, the UK and Europe have shown initial support for a new pathway to accelerate the development of individual therapies to help save patient lives. EveryONE Medicines has already secured initial agreements with European agencies for an abbreviated non-clinical testing pathway, which will lead to a substantial reduction in development costs and timelines. Similar discussions with the FDA are ongoing to implement comparable pathways in the United States.
“Technology is no longer the limiting factor. We can now find the underlying genetic cause of disease in children like Mila and develop a medicine that targets it, even if unique to one or just a few patients,” said Julia Vitarello. “It is no longer a question of whether we can do this, it is will we and when? As patients with rare and common diseases are increasingly being categorized in smaller groups, there is a willingness to significantly change regulatory oversight and reimbursement allowing for an entirely new business model for many highly targeted medicines each for a few or single patients.”
“Today’s drug development process leaves too many patients with extremely rare diseases waiting too long for life-changing therapies,” said Josh Ofman, MD, MSHS, and Chairman at EveryONE Medicines. “Our mission is to pave a faster, more cost-effective path to new medicines that can be delivered in time. No patient should be left behind.”
