Jeff Aronin is the founder, chairman and CEO of Paragon Biosciences, which creates, builds and funds innovative biology-based companies in three areas: cell and gene therapy, adaptive biology and targeted biopharmaceuticals. Paragon has built a dynamic portfolio of seven companies—Castle Creek Biosciences, CiRC Biosciences, Emalex Biosciences, Evozyne, Harmony Biosciences, Qlarity Imaging, and Skyline—since 2017. Under Aronin’s leadership, for this award period, Paragon’s portfolio companies have had several remarkable achievements.
Harmony Biosciences, a commercial-stage pharmaceutical company developing and commercializing innovative therapies for people living with rare neurological disorders who have unmet medical needs, closed its upsized initial public offering in August 2020, raising $150 million with a market cap of $2.5 billion. Harmony shares began trading on the Nasdaq Global Market (“HRMY”) and has been added to the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index (NBI) along with the Russell 2000® and Russell 3000® Indexes. The company went from private start-up to public in under three years. To support its growth, Harmony entered into a strategic financing collaboration with Blackstone (NYSE: BX) in August 2021, providing the company with $330 million of financing and growth capital.
Evozyne, Paragon’s revolutionary adaptive biology portfolio company, continues to make impressive strides at its 30,000-square-foot headquarters in Chicago. Evozyne combines the complexity of nature with machine learning to create optimized proteins that can potentially solve some of society’s most intractable problems, like finding therapeutic solutions to disease processes and environmentally friendly energy sources. Several strategic partnerships, including a collaboration with Takeda, and numerous projects and internal products are underway. The company has added top talent from notable universities nationwide and has grown to employ nearly 75 people in under a year. To support its important work, Evozyne closed a nearly $60 million Series A raise in 2021, upsized 18% over the initial target of $50 million and oversubscribed multiple times.
Emalex Biosciences, founded by Paragon to develop treatments for central nervous system movement disorders and fluency disorders, announced positive topline results from its Phase 2b clinical study for the treatment of pediatric patients with Tourette Syndrome, a condition that has limited FDA-approved treatments. To support the critical work of Emalex, the company completed a $35 million raise in March 2021.
Castle Creek Biosciences, Inc., a clinical-stage cell and gene therapy company, focused on developing and preparing to commercialize disease-modifying and potentially curative therapies for rare genetic diseases, announced in September 2021 a research collaboration with Mayo Clinic to advance discovery and pre-clinical development of investigational gene therapy candidates for osteogenesis imperfecta and classical Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Most recently, the company acquired Novavita Thera, Inc., a preclinical gene therapy company focused on rare liver and metabolic diseases. The acquisition expands Castle Creek’s technology platform by adding in vivo capabilities to its existing ex vivo approach and broadens Castle Creek’s development pipeline beyond skin and connective tissue disorders to rare liver diseases. The company is conducting a Phase 3 clinical trial for the localized treatment of chronic wounds due to recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa which has no FDA-approved treatments available.
CiRC Biosciences, Inc., a regenerative medicine portfolio company of Paragon developing vision restoration treatments, was granted FDA Orphan Drug Designation in March 2021 for chemically induced photoreceptor-like cells (CiPCs), an investigational treatment for retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The company is currently advancing investigational pre-clinical development of CiPCs for vision restoration in advanced RP and geographic atrophy age-related macular degeneration.
Aronin is also the founder and chairman of MATTER, a philanthropic venture-innovation success, with more than 200 healthcare companies at any one time, more than 60 corporate sponsors, and more than $1.7 billion in deals since 2015.
These company milestones and industry achievements are a testament to Aronin’s entrepreneurial expertise, leadership and vision. He is steadfast in his mission to solve some of society’s most challenging problems to improve the world and the way people live. These accomplishments make him a worthy recipient for Entrepreneur of the Year.
