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Steve Butts - CEO Arrivo Bio at BIO Boston 2025 · The BioHub - by Avetix

• 0:04
  So I'm here at Bio in Boston, and I'm here with Steve Butt,
• 0:08
  who is the CEO and founder of Arevo Bio Ventures.
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  Just give me a bit of context on yourself, Steve.
• 0:14
  Thanks Max, Thanks for having me.
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  It's a pleasure. I'm a biotech entrepreneur,
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  serial entrepreneur, had a number of companies over the
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  years. We have a great team.
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  We're based out of North Carolina in the Research
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  Triangle Park area. We, what we do really well is we
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  identify early stage assets that can you know add value to
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  patients, caregivers and physicians and we move those
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  along. Typically we move them through
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  proof of concept into early phase three.
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  And then we have historically found a larger pharma to take
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  them the rest of the way and commercialize.
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  We founded a RIVO in 2016 and with the goal really of
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  identifying four or five assets that we felt like really could
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  be game changers for the practice of medicine and put
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  together about $50 million and went out and went shopping and
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  we ended up with a portfolio of products that we're really proud
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  of. We've had we have two products
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  that we're developing now. We've got our lead asset, which
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  is a product called for Biservat.
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  For Biservat, the code for it was SP624.
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  It is for a major depression is the first indication.
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  However, it's a completely novel mechanism.
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  It's a Cert 6 activator. We're the first company to ever
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  put a Cert 6 activator into a depressed patient or frankly any
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  patient, and we're very excited about the possibilities here.
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  It's an epigenetic mechanism which is really novel and unique
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  out there. And what we found is, is that it
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  seems to be preferential to females and not males.
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  What's unusual about this is, and some recent work has come
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  about to show that males and females, when they're depressed,
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  they actually express the same gene in opposite directions.
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  And so if you have an epigenetic drug, you're likely to impact
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  one sex and not the other. So we're excited about this.
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  We're in a large phase 2B3 study, and we'll see if we're
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  right. And if we're right, this will
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  really change the way people think about depression.
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  And our second asset is a product called Robbie 767.
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  It's for severe acute pancreatitis, it's in phase two
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  study very early still, but there are no treatments for
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  severe acute pancreatitis patients died from this disease.
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  And really all we have is fluids and pain management for these
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  patients. And so this is another one that
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  we can can deliver or really make an impact on how patients,
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  how patients are treated and and the family, you know the
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  families of those patients will be able to kind of keep their
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  keep their loved. Ones, yeah.
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  That's a little bit about Arivo and a little bit about the
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  products that we have. Yeah, that's awesome.
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  How do you like when you're looking at new products, how do
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  you decide? Yes, they're the ones that we we
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  are best to to bring in and look up.
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  It's a great question. And you know, we're a small
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  company and so, but we have some pretty strict criteria.
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  We've, we've looked at hundreds of products to bring in the ones
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  that we're working on and our criteria, first and foremost it,
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  it needs to offer a significant improvement in patient care
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  through the eyes of the physician, the treating
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  physician as well as the patient.
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  It also needs to have a clear regulatory and development
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  pathway. And that may sound a little bit
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  unique, but as a small company, we don't have the resources to
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  take a completely new indication that no one's ever studied and,
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  and take years to kind of sort out how you're going to develop
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  that drug and work with the FDA. The the third piece of it is it
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  needs to be something that we can manage.
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  We've passed on a lot of great assets over the years, not
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  because we didn't think they were technically good
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  opportunities, but because they were going to require too much
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  resource or too many too long of a time period for a little
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  company like ours to do. And so, you know, take something
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  like Alzheimer's, you know, those are huge studies.
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  They take a long time. That's not something a little
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  company like ours can take on. And then the final piece of it
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  is as we like to be able to find something that we can answer the
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  questions that we need to answer in order to attract a larger
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  partner who has commercial capabilities to take on the
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  asset along the way. So you know, we don't have
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  commercial capabilities right now.
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  I mean, so it's important for us when we're looking at an asset
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  to be able to go, hey, you know, can we actually answer the
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  questions that a large pharma player or a mid pharma player is
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  going to need answered so they would be comfortable taking this
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  asset on, Yeah, before we get to commercialization.
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  Typically when when do you bring these assets in?
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  What stage are they at? Yeah.
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  So the typically what we bring them in is when they're ready
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  for the clinic, OK. And that's what we did with both
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  of these assets. So we brought these assets in
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  and filed the Ind and then we ran the phase ones and you know
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  are now running patient status. OK.
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  And we're at Bio. So what, what does a successful
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  week look like here at Bio? Like what?
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  What are the the main goals I guess?
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  Yeah. No, I think this is a fun bio
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  for us in that we're currently in the middle of our studies and
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  so we're not transacting on anything.
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  So we can spend our week meeting with interested potential
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  partners down the road. Yeah.
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  Share with them what we're doing.
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  Share updates on how our enrollment's going.
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  Talk to them about our science in a kind of a more relaxed
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  environment. Yeah, just get on their radar.
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  Just get on their. Radar, you know, just have
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  conversations and I think everybody relaxes in those rooms
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  when you're like, hey, we just want to tell you what we're
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  doing. Yeah, Yeah.
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  How do they react when you've got 2 assets that are very
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  different? Do they normally some interested
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  in one and not the other or so on?
• 5:56
  It's a good question and we're a bit odd from that perspective,
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  so I appreciate you asking the question.
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  So we're structured a little bit differently in that Arevo Bio or
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  Arevo Bio Ventures is a holding company.
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  I mean it essentially holds the cash and then each one of our
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  assets is in a wholly owned C Corp subsidiary.
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  So that allows us maximum flexibility.
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  We're able to raise money in those different C Corps if we
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  decide to, we can partner individually, we can sell those
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  C Corps individually. So it allows us flexibility to
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  partner when it's time to partner, raise money when it's
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  time to raise money. And if someone's not interested
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  in both, then we don't have to, you know, get into a situation
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  where we're going to sub optimize one of the assets
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  because we have to sell everything together.
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  So we've learned over the years, this is, you know, our fifth
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  company. We've been, you know, we've
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  we've learned all the lessons along the way.
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  We always joke that one day we'll get this right.
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  But but yeah, that's how we're structured.
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  Yeah, I think it's super smart and it makes sense when you
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  have, I mean completely different assets.
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  But but also I don't know how much you thought about this when
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  you were bringing them in like super on trend assets in terms
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  of the the area they're in and if on trends may be the right
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  word. But you know, like depression,
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  for example, it's just a topic of conversation all the time.
• 7:14
  All the time you. Know and it's you know, when we
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  looked for assets, you know we really wanted something that
• 7:21
  that was a high unmet need for and depression, you know and a
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  lot of the neuropsychiatric indications are now back in
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  vogue. Now we've been developing drugs
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  for neuropsychiatric indications for a long time and we've been
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  kind of in and out of popularity along over the years.
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  But we believe that there is a huge need.
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  I mean, depression is an epidemic worldwide.
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  And despite the the treatments that are coming along, we still
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  haven't solved the problem. And so for us, you know, it's a
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  personal matter. You know, everyone knows someone
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  that's been touched by depression.
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  And so we, when we saw this asset and we thought, you know,
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  this was a novel mechanism that was something that was you could
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  attack it from a completely different direction.
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  We just felt like we needed to do it.
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  Yeah, Yeah, I think so. And we were talking about that
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  earlier in terms of your motivations, why you do what you
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  do. Yeah, you know, it's, it's nice.
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  I, you know, I've been in the industry for over 30 years and
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  it's great to get up every morning and know that, you know,
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  what you're driving to is improving patients lives.
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  And it's great that we can do well while we're doing good.
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  But you know, it's, it's exciting for us when we, you
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  know, get up in the morning and we talk to key opinion leaders
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  or we talk to advocacy organizations, you know, and you
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  can, you can see how excited everyone is about the
• 8:42
  possibilities here. Yeah.
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  And that's what it's all about, right?
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  Yeah, how we found it as a smaller company in in what is a
• 8:51
  tough environment at the moment. Yeah, we've been, you know,
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  we've been very fortunate. It is a very tough environment
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  and a lot of my colleagues are, you know, struggling right now
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  with funding etcetera. But we've been very fortunate.
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  We have a great group of investors who believe in us and
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  believe in what we're doing and they've been supporting us for
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  years. And and so we've been fortunate
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  from that perspective. You know, we do have to be very
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  mindful of the environment right now and make sure that we are
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  being extraordinarily efficient with our spend.
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  And, you know, it's one of the things that we see with the
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  environment now is this, you know, we would love to be doing
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  even more, but we want to make sure that we have the ability to
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  survive. You know, if the market doesn't
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  continue, you know, you continues to do what it's doing.
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  Yeah, you know, not been positive.
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  That's exactly it. Yeah.
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  So look, best of luck this week. Yeah, great.
• 9:42
  Thank you. It's been a pleasure to have
• 9:44
  you. Thanks for having.
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  Us. Yeah.
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  Thank you very much, Steve.