A Company with the Goal to Take the Biotech Industry by Storm
Tempest Therapeutics is a clinical-stage oncology company advancing novel investigational therapies that combine both tumor-targeted and immune-mediated mechanisms with the potential to treat a wide range of tumors.
The company’s two clinical programs are TPST-1120 and TPST-1495, antagonists of PPARα and EP2/EP4, respectively. Both programs are advancing through clinical trials designed to study the agents as monotherapies and in combination with other approved agents, including a global randomized study combining TPST-1120 with the standard of care for firstline patients with liver cancer. Tempest is also developing two preclinical programs, including an orally available inhibitor of TREX1, a target that controls activation of the cGAS/STING pathway, which is a fundamental part of the immune system and sought after as a target to treat cancer.
A Timeline of the Leader’s Journey
An inspiring personality, Stephen Brady is the CEO of Tempest. He first joined the company in September 2019 as the President and Chief Operating Officer. Before Tempest, he served as Executive Vice President, Strategy and Finance at Immune Design, a biopharmaceutical company that was sold to Merck in 2019.
At Immune Design, he led strategy, corporate development, finance, and investor and public relations, as well as other general and administrative functions, and was instrumental in the company’s successful IPO, financings, and eventual sale. Before Immune Design, he held roles of increasing responsibility in multiple biopharmaceutical companies, including as Vice President of corporate development at Proteolix, where he had primary responsibility for the company’s business development activities and sale to Onyx Pharmaceuticals.
He also sits on the Board of Directors of Atreca, Inc. and the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO). He obtained a B.A. in English with honors, followed by graduate school for a J.D. and an LL.M
A Groundswell at Tempest
A reflective leader, Stephen knows an experienced and cohesive team provides innovative science with the highest chance of success in navigating the difficult drug development process, with the end goal of helping patients. It was the strong foundation in both the people and science that attracted Stephen to Tempest: he knew the founding CEO of the company, as well as the largest investor and Chairman of the Board – all of whom are impressive and highly experienced drug developers. The Tempest team was aligned in their views of how to build a successful biopharmaceutical company, which was important. The science was also important: this is a tough business, and only worth it for him to join if Tempest would strive to make a meaningful improvement in patients’ lives.
Steering Through Difficult Waters to Value
Stephen is a savvy biotech executive who, at the companies he has served over the years, has been a driving force in successful strategies resulting in a wide rage of deals, including financings, partnerships, and M&A. His extensive experience in strategic, legal, operational, and business matters makes him an excellent partner with Tempest’s clinical and scientific teams, shaping direction for the organization towards building value for patients and stockholders.
Under his leadership, Tempest has built very efficient and productive team, secured a public company listing through a highly selective reverse-merger process, advanced its lead clinical asset into a first-line patient population via an unprecedented collaboration with a multinational pharma company, expanded its pipeline to include a fourth novel target, and navigated a treacherous funding environment with enough runway to achieve potentially-catalytic milestones.
Mission and Vision
The mission at Tempest is to develop successful cancer therapeutics that make a meaningful difference in patients’ lives. While its current programs are small molecules that combine both targeted and immunemediated mechanisms, the team has the scientific experience, freedom and discernment to explore different modalities to address unmet medical needs or to improve the standard of care for cancer patients.
Conquering Challenges on the Go
Tempest faces both traditional and more recent challenges. On the former, there’s always the challenge of forging new ground with novel science (i.e., “will it work?”). Tempest addresses this by having a truly diversified pipeline of novel small molecules that combine both tumor-targeted and immune-mediated mechanisms: its therapies stand individually and are not bound by a single pathway or approach. In addition, the organization investigates its targets and potential therapeutic agents extensively before starting clinical trials.
With respect to more recent challenges, the biotech capital markets have been volatile and largely inhospitable. Many companies are having trouble raising capital to continue programs and operations. Tempest is efficiently run, and the team makes careful decisions about capital deployment generally, but even more so in this market.
Stephen’s Word on the Emerging Trends of the Biotech Industry
The Biotech industry continues to grow and evolve, and we’ve seen a significant expansion in new modes of intervention in recent years, such as targeted therapeutic approaches and cell therapies.
Depending on the reader’s view, we have a “social contract” with society to develop new therapies, and provide a pricing structure that supports continuation of innovation in the future.
A key trend is to focus on developing cost-effective therapies in an increasingly rigid reimbursement environment, and bringing all participants into the mix, e.g., pharma, bio, PBMs, etc. As oral therapeutics, our current pipeline has the potential to provide convenient and ultimately, “less costly”, treatment alternatives.
Efficiently Tackling the Pandemic Situation
The pandemic dramatically affected the health, economy, businesses, and social mobility of people around the world, and the biotech industry was not spared.
Specific to Tempest, although the company had no material delays in its programs, it saw a slowdown in certain clinical study enrollment at academic sites as they shifted priorities to pandemic patients, faced staffing shortages, or saw study participants elect not to come to the site due to fear of infection.
As a company with active labs, Tempest largely continued operations throughout the pandemic. Today, the company is not seeing delays in any significant sense across the business (including in the supply chain) and looks forward to the continued advancement of its clinical pipeline as it heads into 2023.
Words of Wisdom
Stephen pens a compelling note for readers and shares his insights on making a difference in his career.
“I would like to be able to look back on this career and see that we improved the lives of patients and provided a return to investors, while also creating a constructive (and sometimes even fun) work environment. We’re looking forward to 2023, which could be Tempest’s best year yet.”
An Action-Packed Future
At Tempest, the goal is to advance novel therapeutics that will bring meaningful benefit to cancer patients – The Tempest team wants to make a difference. To do this, it is developing a first-in-class oncology pipeline of small molecule therapeutics with broad potential. The product candidates are designed to treat cancer by targeting tumor cells directly, activating the body’s immune system to fight cancer, or by combining both mechanisms.
