LiteHaus360 Incubator:: Founder showcase

We invite Founders to showcase their companies (start-up or growth stage) on LiteHaus Incubator. We have an extensive network of investors seeking promising entrepreneurs who bring disruptive ideas and technologies to the biomedical industry and patients.

To know more, email us at harsh.bal@alumni.upenn.edu.

MBC Pharma, Inc.: 

  • MBC Pharma demonstrated first-in-class efficacy in human subjects with Phase I clinical trial results of significant reductions in more than half of all bone lesions in prostate and breast cancers derived bone metastases
  • The Company uses proprietary phosphate-based linking chemistry to enhance bone-targeting, while increasing specificity and target cell uptake, and reducing toxicity
  • Their pipeline compounds are designed to directly target cancer cells responsible for bone lesions, delivering therapeutically useful doses of anticancer drugs to the bone, in higher concentrations than possible with current therapies
  • The proprietary approach to drug combination therapy uses the novel interaction of two gradients: one from bone-released drug from the conjugate, and the second diffusing in from the blood stream 


 

Objectives 

  • MBC Pharma will pursue capital investment by a VC fund or partnering with or acquisition by a company that is able to realize the full potential of these lead compounds and development of the platform for a range of disease areas and indications 
  • The Company is seeking Series A funding of $44M in two tranches for IND enabling studies on a number of pipeline compounds 



A summary of the technologies can be downloaded from here.

 

Company highlights

  1. Reduced development risk: Patented drug design platforms connect two established drugs via a natural linker to form an NCE, that releases the drug upon binding to bone
  2. Human POC: A Phase I clinical trial of the lead compound in patients with cancer- induced bone disease demonstrated safety, tolerability and efficacy. Of the 206 total bone lesions measured across all patients, 53.8% were significantly reduced after two cycles of therapy

3. IP position: MBC holds 23 US and international patents issued on its lead compound and various platform technologies with 16 additional US and overseas patents pending. Two PCT applications on formulation and method of use are currently at the stage of National Phase applications in multiple countries

4. Seasoned leadership: The management team brings extensive experience in R&D operations, chemistry and clinical development along with an exceptional track record of capital raise with $5.9 M in non-dilutive (grant) funding and $3M in seed funding to date


Further details are available under CDA. For more information, please reach us at harsh.bal@alumni.upenn.edu.

Company Falcon: 

Falcon CEO obtained his PhD from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai and brings extensive research experience of over 45 years in cell and molecular biology from organizations such as the US NCI, NIH and NHLBI. He conducted research in the industry at a global Japanese pharmaceutical company and served as faculty at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He has published several research papers in peer reviewed popular scientific journals and owns three US patents on the development of novel scientific methods for basic and applied research.


Falcon has technologies for the development of 

#1. A novel class of anti-cancer drugs
#2. Custom organoids for drug R&D

A summary of the technologies can be downloaded from here.

 

Technology #1: Falcon has developed an entirely new paradigm confirmed by unequivocal experimental evidence to develop a new class of drugs to treat cancers and metastatic disease. The presence of a common epigenetic growth regulator (EGR) responsible for unregulated growth of a range of cancers has been conclusively established by a novel cell growth activation assay. Such EGR is not present in normal and non-malignant cells. Cell biology tools necessary to identify the chemical nature of EGR have also been created. An entirely new class of drugs can be developed targeted to the EGR present only in cancer cells. 

Technology #2: Falcon has developed an efficient method to prepare organoid cultures from fresh solid tumor specimens. This method uses a proprietary medium and growth surface to enrich for tumor cells and does not involve transfer of exogeneous genes or cellular components from other cell types. Several thousand organoids can be established depending on the quality and size of the tumor tissue. The organoids can be cryopreserved and thawed with >80% functional recovery and can be maintained for several weeks in culture and are therefore excellent models for drug development and validation.

Both technologies are immediately available for licensing/sale. For more information, reach us at harsh.bal@alumni.upenn.edu.

Human primary cells – Any cell type

• Difficult to culture in vitro

• High COGS to culture and use for drug screening

• Life span in cell culture ~10 days

Human Transformed cells

• Easy to culture in vitro

• Low COGS to culture and use for high throughput drug screening

• Immortalized for extended life span

• Same phenotype as primary cells


Company Nova

Nova is a biotech company based out of Bangalore, India and Marlton, New Jersey, focused on developing novel platforms to address cancer metastasis-focused predictive diagnostics and novel drug discovery. Nova has successfully raised ~$0.5M from a combination of angel and venture funds, as well as non-dilutive Federal grants. 

Nova has platforms for the development of -

#1.  Novel diagnostics for prediction of cancer metastases

#2. Therapeutics platform for discovery of novel targets and therapeutic agents against metastatic disease

 
A summary of the technologies can be downloaded from here. 



The Problem
Metastases are responsible for 90% of cancer-related deaths, as 5-year patient survival drops by fifty to ninety per cent for metastatic cancers. Currently, a single non-radioactive drug is approved to treat the process of metastasis and multiple clinical failures have led to the de-prioritization of metastasis-related drug discovery. In addition, medical oncologists are unable to predict which patients will have a higher probability of metastasis and no predictive diagnostics are available to date to address this key question.

Solution – The Nova platform  

Nova has dissected the complete metastasis biology into twenty-two functional assays and multiple characterization steps, including cellular phenotyping and mechanobiology.  For successful in vitro to in vivo translation, Nova has created a proprietary animal model that successfully measures orthotopic spontaneous metastasis with a 100% take rate in under six weeks, thereby decreasing the discovery turnaround time immensely.  The company has also identified four novel first-in-class targets for cancer metastasis, one of which is validated via both genetic engineering and available tool compounds in cell lines and patient samples.

Nova aims to raise a Series A round of $2M to advance their first discovery program on a first-in-class target, validated by their platform, and the first drug repurposing candidate, along with a larger clinical trial for validating their predictive diagnostics platform.

For more information, reach us at harsh.bal@alumni.upenn.edu.