The Bio Report

Senti Bio is using synthetic biology to build intelligence into cell and gene therapies, altering the way they act depending on the changing biological circumstances they may encounter in the body. Doing so may lead to safer and more effective therapies and address such things as the tumor microenvironment and mechanisms cancer have to grow, spread, and become resistant to treatments. Ahead of his appearance at the SynBioBeta conference that runs October 1-3 in San Francisco, we spoke to Tim Lu, co-founder and CEO of Senti Bio, about the company’s efforts to engineer a new class of intelligent medicines, its ability to design therapies that hit multiple targets, and its strategy to leverage its technology to reach beyond oncology through partnerships.

Nurix Therapeutics is harnessing the body’s natural process for controlling protein levels to target and degrade proteins that drive cancer and other diseases. Its small molecule therapies control key enzymes responsible for protein breakdown and can be used to modulate the levels of proteins within cells. The company believes it can leverage the approach to treat a range of diseases. We spoke to Arthur Sands, CEO of Nurix, about the company’s discovery platform, its pipeline of cancer therapies, and its recent collaboration with Gilead Sciences to discover and develop drug candidates against up to five targets.

The biopharmaceutical industry has been embracing artificial intelligence as a way to address complex issues of drug design and development, but Aktana is betting that such big data analysis can improve decision-making around sales and marketing too. Aktana’s AI technology integrates with a company’s customer relationship management system to synthesize data from a wide variety of sources and guide marketing teams and sales reps about such things as which physicians to contact, when to do so, and how to best approach them. We spoke to David Ehrlich, president and CEO of Aktana, about the company’s decision support products, how they work, and the case for using AI to improve sales and marketing decision-making.

When David Fajgenbaum was in medical school, he became stricken with a rare autoimmune disease that nearly killed him. Though he recovered, he would suffer recurring, life-threatening flares only to discover the poor state of research into condition. Fajgenbaum chronicles his rare disease journey and his efforts to drive research and find treatments in his new book “Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope into Action.” Fajgenbaum, who is executive director of the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network, will be featured at this year’s Global Genes Rare Patient Advocacy Summit, which begins in San Diego September 18. Ahead of the summit, we spoke to him about his experience as a rare disease patient, his efforts to find treatments for his conditions, and how his innovative approach to developing a patient-driven research agenda has provided a roadmap for other rare disease organization to follow suit.

Among the many challenges to developing stem cell therapies is the need to match donors to recipients and the risk of graft vs. host disease that requires the use of immunosuppressants. Athersys has developed a stem cell therapy platform known as MultiStem that makes use of a type of stem cell that doesn’t carry the risk of causing an immune response. What’s more, cells from a single donor can be expanded to provide potentially millions of doses to treat a wide range of conditions making it a scalable, off-the-shelf therapy. The company’s is in late-stage clinical testing of its cell therapy for the treatment of ischemic stroke, a leading cause of serious disability. We spoke to Gil Van Bokkelen, CEO of Athersys, about the company’s MultiStem platform, how it works, and the range of indications it is pursuing.

Immunotherapies have mostly sought to harness the adaptive immune system, but Silverback Therapeutics believes its technology platform will allow it to enlist the innate immune system in the fight against cancer, fibrosis, and infectious diseases. The company is developing antibody conjugates that activate myeloid cells to target tumors. It’s lead indication is in HER-2 positive tumors. We spoke to Peter Thompson, co-founder and CEO of Silverback, about the company’s platform technology, its potential applications, and the challenges of activating the innate immune system in a targeted fashion.

Artificial intelligence is all the rage in drug discovery today, but there are efforts to apply to technology to other aspects of the drug development continuum to improve decision making and increase efficiency. One such example is Phesi, which has developed an artificial intelligence platform to improve clinical site selection, evaluate protocol designs and patient inclusion criteria, and manage the implementation of trials. We spoke to Gen Li, founder and president of Phesi, about his company’s AI platform, how it works, and the case for the use of artificial intelligence as a tool to improve drug development.

Antibody-drug conjugates marry the precise targeting of an antibody to a cytotoxic payload. That has the potential to provide a powerful treatment approach to a variety of cancers with less toxicity than systemically delivered chemotherapy. The problem has been producing large quantities of antibody-drug conjugates in a consistent manner where all the pieces are where they belong. Sutro Biopharma has developed a technology platform that allows it to precisely design and consistently manufacture these molecules. We spoke to Bill Newell, CEO of Sutro, about the promise of antibody-drug conjugates, the company’s platform technology, and its lead therapeutic candidates.

While much of the focus of drug developers looking to act on the genetic mechanisms underlying diseases has focused on the genes that code for proteins, Syros Pharmaceuticals is looking to the regulatory regions of the genome. This is the noncoding part of the genome that controls the expression of genes, turning them on or off, or modulating their level of activity. We spoke to Eric Olson, chief scientific officer of Syros Pharmaceuticals, about the company’s discovery platform, its pursuit of cancer and monogenic diseases, and the lead programs in its pipeline.

Anixa Biosciences is harnessing the immune system to both diagnose and treat cancer. It recently announced a licensing agreement with the Cleveland clinic for a novel breast cancer vaccine that is being developed for both therapeutic and prophylactic use. It’s lead candidate is a CAR-T cell therapy in development for ovarian and other solid tumors. We spoke to Amit Kumar, president and CEO of Anixa, about the company’s strategy to pursue both therapeutic and diagnostic products, its partnerships with leading research institutes, and its development strategy going forward.

There’s growing interest in cannabinoids for their therapeutic potential in a range of conditions, but one challenge therapeutic developers face is a reliable and consistent supply. Teewinot Life Sciences is using synthetic biology to produce a range of cannabinoids. We spoke to Michael Luther, president and CEO of Teewinot Life Sciences, about the companies process for producing cannabinoids, its business model, and the therapeutic and consumer areas it plans to pursue.

Much has been made about a cancer moonshot, but in the world of oncology, rocket fuel is rarely a topic of conversation except maybe as a metaphor. EpicentRx, though, is looking to rocket fuel as a source for its lead experimental therapy RRx-001. It believes this high-energy molecule, derived from rocket fuel, has the potential to improve immunotherapies and radiotherapies, as well as having anticancer activity on its own. We spoke to Corey Carter, president and CEO of EpicentRx about how RRx-001 came about, how it works, and the company’s oncolytic viral pipeline also in development.

The complexity of individual tumors creates a challenge for physicians to determine the optimal treatment for any given patient. This complexity may also require a combination of therapies to target the multiple pathways a given cancer may exploit to grow and spread. My Personalized Therapeutics is taking a model systems approach to pair patients to customized drug regimens by using fruit fly models of a patient’s cancer to screen hundreds of FDA approved therapies and combinations. We spoke to Laura Towart, co-founder and CEO of My Personalized Therapeutics, about the company’s Personalized Discovery Process, how it works, and why it may lead to better outcomes for cancer patients.

As biomedical data proliferates and the life sciences becomes more closely integrated with data science, the ability for researchers to access, use, and learn from the growing universe of information requires new tools. InveniAI is seeking to address this need with its artificial intelligence platform for biopharmaceutical companies to both monitor innovation and to enhance their own drug development capabilities. We spoke to Krishnan Nandabalan, president and CEO of InveniAI, about the company, how its artificial intelligence platform is being used, and what he expects the ultimate payoff from this technology will be.

The convergence of information technology with the life sciences is opening up new ways of approaching the challenges of drug discovery and development. While much has been made about approaches that seek to leverage artificial intelligence, Nanome is bringing virtural reality into the process. With the company’s technology, scientists can take a fantastic journey to view and manipulate proteins, compounds, and other molecules at a nanoscale. We spoke to Steve McCloskey, founder and CEO of Nanome, about the company’s virtual reality platform, how scientists can use it to collaborate in real time, and its potential to change the way researchers discover and develop drugs.

The high cost of developing therapies impedes the pharmaceutical industry’s ability to bring innovative products to market, but also leaves potentially valuable discoveries languishing on university shelves. The Swiss non-profit foundation Molecule is trying to alter the landscape by establishing an online marketplace to create shared ownership of intellectual property and provide a new funding mechanism for early-stage experimental therapies that could also lead to distributed research and development of promising drugs. We spoke to Paul Kohlhaas, founder of Molecule, about the market it is developing, how it would work, and the challenges it will need to overcome to make it a reality.

Mesenchymal stem cells may be a powerful way to treat a range of medical conditions but realizing the therapeutic potential of these cells has been hampered in part by the challenges of manufacturing a consistent product at scale. Cynata Therapeutics believes its platform technology addresses these challenges. The company lead cell therapy candidate is being developed to treat graft vs. host disease, a potentially deadly response to the transplantation of cells from a donor. We spoke to Ross MacDonald, CEO of Cynata, about the company’s platform technology, the potential for these therapies, and the indications the company is pursuing.

The placebo response in clinical trials can derail a promising experimental therapy that might benefit patients. In cases where trials rely on subjective endpoints or patient-reported outcomes, the placebo response can be more pronounced. Tools4patient has developed a means of identifying patients who are likely to be placebo responders and allow trial sponsors to take steps to account for that in clinical studies. We spoke to Erica Smith, vice president of business development at Tools4Patient, about the placebo response, the consequence this phenomenon has on drug development, and how the company is seeking to address this problem.

Artificial intelligence is being embraced the pharmaceutical industry as a way to reduce the time and cost of drug development. BioXcel Therapeutics is using AI to leverage as a means to identify new targets for approved drugs and clinically-validated drug candidates with a focus on oncology and neurology. We spoke to Vimal Mehta, CEO and founder of BioXcel Therapeutics, about the company’s AI platform, what makes it unique, and its pipeline of repurposed therapies.

The ability to capture and parse data in real-time and at a vast scale is transforming our approach to biomedical research and has the potential to change the way we think about the causes of disease, public health, and medical interventions. Paul Glimcher, president and CEO of Datacubed Health and professor of Neural Science, Economics and Psychology, at New York University, where he directs the Institute for the Study of Decision Making, is conducting an ambitious study known as The Human Project. The study will gather data on the everyday habits and health of 10,000 New Yorkers over 20 years to find critical connections between biology, behavior, and the environment to drive evidence-based public policies to improve lives. Through his company Datacubed Health, he’s using the same technologies to drive patient-centered research. We spoke to Glimcher about his work, how technology is changing the nature of health research, and how he sees digital technology transforming the healthcare continuum from discover