Freedom And Capital Drive Intarcia Down Independent Path

In the late winter of 2013, around the time Intarcia Therapeutics Inc. was enrolling the first patients in its global Phase III Freedom trials for ITCA 650, its lead product in diabetes, the biotech moved from California to Boston, settling into Seaport offices overlooking the city’s convention center. Intarcia chairman and CEO Kurt Graves says the location was picked with an eye toward the 75th Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association, where in early June Intarcia presented the first successful results from Freedom. Though it “seems like yesterday,” Graves has been looking out those windows for two years. “We just had to pray the data came out the way we wanted it to,” he says.

But back then, Intarcia wasn’t just a couple blocks’ walk and solid Phase III results away from a celebratory ADA meeting. By Graves’ estimation the company also needed about a billion dollars in capital to execute on its strategy