| Name | Title | Contact Details |
|---|---|---|
Tony Mullin |
Chief People Officer | Profile |
Kevin McManus |
Chief Human Resources Officer | Profile |
Type 1 diabetes (T1D), formerly known as juvenile diabetes, is a chronic, life-threatening disease that affects millions of people worldwide. In the United States, 30,000 new cases are estimated every year with half of those cases diagnosed in young children. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the patient`s immune system goes awry and attacks and destroys the pancreatic beta cells. Beta cells are responsible for regulating blood sugar (glucose) levels by producing precise amounts of the essential hormone insulin. The discovery of injectable insulin in the 1920s changed T1D from a uniformly fatal disease with a life expectancy of months to one that could be carefully managed for decades through multiple daily blood glucose measurements and insulin injections. However, insulin injections are not a cure and patients face a lifetime of difficult disease management and serious complications including kidney failure, blindness and nerve damage. Despite nearly a century passing since the discovery of insulin, insulin injection remains the only treatment available to patients. Semma Therapeutics was founded to develop transformative therapies for patients who currently depend on insulin injections. Recent work in the laboratory of Professor Douglas Melton led to the discovery of a method to generate billions of functional, insulin-producing beta cells in the laboratory. These cells develop in islet-like clusters grown from stem cells. Initial preclinical work in animal models of diabetes has shown that transplantation of these cells are sufficient to control blood glucose levels. This breakthrough technology has been exclusively licensed to Semma Therapeutics for the development of a cell-based therapy for diabetes. Ongoing research at Semma Therapeutics is focused on combining these proprietary cells with a state-of-the-art cell delivery and immune protection strategy that can protect these cells from the patient`s immune system and allow the beta cells to function as they do in non-diabetic individuals. Implantation of the beta cell-filled device has the potential to provide a true replacement for the missing beta cells in a diabetic patient and would not require patient immunosuppression. Semma Therapeutics is working to bring this new therapeutic option to the clinic and improve the lives of patients with diabetes.
Taiga Biotechnologies is a privately-held developer of novel therapies for complex diseases including cancers, infectious agents such as HIV and influenza, and hematologic conditions.
Calithera is discovering and developing novel small molecule drugs directed against tumor metabolism and tumor immunology targets for the treatment of cancer. Calithera Biosciences is a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing novel small molecule drugs directed against tumor metabolism and tumor immunology targets for the treatment of cancer. Tumor metabolism and tumor immunology have emerged as promising new fields for cancer drug discovery, and recent clinical successes with therapeutic agents in each field have demonstrated the potential to create fundamentally new therapies for cancer patients. Our lead product candidate in tumor metabolism, CB-839, is an internally discovered, first-in-class inhibitor of glutaminase, a critical enzyme in tumor metabolism. We are currently evaluating CB-839 in three Phase 1 clinical trials in solid and hematological tumors. In tumor immunology, our lead preclinical program is directed at developing inhibitors of the enzyme arginase and may provide a first-in-class therapeutic agent for this novel target. Our ongoing research efforts are focused on discovering additional product candidates against novel tumor metabolism and immunology targets.
Adaptive Phage Therapeutics (APT) is a clinical-stage company advancing therapies addressing multi-drug resistant infections. Prior antimicrobial therapeutic approaches have been “fixed,” while pathogens continue to evolve resistance to each of those therapeutics, causing those drug products to become rapidly less effective in commercial use as antimicrobial resistance (AMR) increases over time. APT`s PhageBank™ approach leverages an ever-expanding library of bacteriophage (phage) that collectively provide evergreen broad spectrum and polymicrobial coverage. PhageBank™ phages are matched through a proprietary phage susceptibility assay that APT has teamed with Mayo Clinic Laboratories to commercialize on a global scale. APT`s technology was originally developed by the biodefense program of U.S. Department of Defense. APT acquired the world-wide exclusive commercial rights in 2017. Under FDA emergency Investigational New Drug allowance, APT has provided investigational PhageBank™ therapy to treat more than 40 critically ill patients in which standard-of-care antibiotics had failed.
Valitor, Inc. has developed novel methods of modifying therapeutic proteins to achieve substantial control over their pharmacokinetics, target specificity and bioactivity. Our technology platform can be broadly applied to improve the pharmacological properties of many protein drugs that are currently approved or under development. We currently have development pipelines in the fields of dermatology, ophthalmology, orthopedics, and stem cell therapy that highlight the capabilities of our novel drug products.