I am the CEO and founder of BLR Bio, an emerging biotech with a platform of therapeutic peptides and a companion diagnostic focused on the treatment of cancer and fibrotic disease. Our first-in-class technology is based on a discovery in an academic laboratory I headed at Rosalind Franklin University, while also Director of R&D at Baxter Healthcare's Renal Division. We discovered that the matricellular signaling CCN3 is a natural regulator of the pro-fibrotic and pro-cancer CCN2 working down multiple pathways. This led us to discover, create, and test unique synthetic peptides which we have now shown to be specific, stable, safe, and effective in animal in variety of human disease models. These include, pancreatic cancer, diabetic kidney disease, endstage renal disease, NASH, scleroderma, and skin scarring. We are now, for the first time, seeking investor/partners to move our lead novel therapies to the clinic.
Dr. Chengcang Charles Wu, founder/CEO of Intact Genomics, Inc. has over 20 years of research and development experience in 100kb large DNA technology for genomic studies, metagenomics, large-scale natural production and drug discovery, development, including five years as Vice President of Lucigen Corporation. He is one of leading inventors of plant artificial chromosomes at Pioneer/DuPont. Dr. Wu has published a pending patent on fungal artificial chromosome (FAC) technology and several other provisional patent applications at Intact Genomics (www.intactgenomics.com ).
I am building a team of IG Therapeutics, a whole-owned division of Intact Genomics, Inc. We focus on early-stage drug discovery and development by addressing the unmet medical need for novel drugs that can effectively treat infectious diseases. We utilize a transformative metagenomic strategy to unearth medicines from nature that are devoid of the historical major bottleneck of more than 99% re-discovery rate of large-scale natural product discovery by existing culture-based methods. IG Therapeutics’ platform overcomes the problems of more than 99.9% unculturable microbes and at least 90% silent large gene clusters. We have both patents and trade secrets for our novel technologies. We intend to raise investment (about $20M) to advance thousands of new small molecules through pre-clinical development, whereby we can bring our technologies to a key value inflection point where we can then partner with large biotech and pharmaceutical companies at the value of at least $500M within 3 to 5 years.
Neurodon (www.neurodon.net ) is developing novel small molecules for major diseases targeting a unique mechanism with demonstrated efficacy in preclinical animal models of diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and more.
Dr. Russell Dahl has over 20 years of experience in the Pharma and Biotech arenas in leadership roles at DuPont Pharmaceuticals, BMS, Agouron Pharmaceuticals, Vertex, and other companies. He has been involved in many successful biotech startups as a founder or advisor and has been directly involved in raising significant funding including non-dilutive capital and successful IPOs in tough markets. His experience spans all phases of development and he has contributed to several IND filings and regulatory approvals. Russell has co-authored over 90 scientific publications, is an inventor on over 50 patent applications, and has delivered over 30 invited lectures. In addition to industry leadership, he is a former Professor of Neuroscience and Medicinal Chemistry. Russell received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of California, San Diego as a DuPont Pharmaceuticals Fellow and has additional training in molecular pharmacology from Stanford University.
I am representing BrainXell (www.brainxell.com ). It offers human stem cell-based products and services in drug discovery for neurological and psychiatric diseases. Core technologies were developed in the lab of Steenbock Professor Su-Chun Zhang at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison. He is a pioneer in neural stem cell and one of the founders of the company. The technologies are further optimized at BrainXell to direct human iPSCs to subtype-specific neuronal progenitors for expansion followed by rapid maturation. This reliable approach allows for large-scale production of highly enriched functional neurons with consistent quality for drug discovery and cell therapy. We have dual business model leveraging our common technological assets. While our neural cell products and services in preclinical market have been growing nicely to be profitable, we are raising fund to adapt our cell production technologies to a cGMP environment. We will produce large numbers of high-purity neural cells efficiently that could be used for Parkinson’s disease (PD) and multiple sclerosis (MS)/spinal cord injury (SCI).
James Franck Professor
Depts of Chemistry and Radiation & Cellular Oncology
University of Chicago
Chairman of the Board
RiMO Therapeutics and Coordination Pharmaceuticals
RiMO Therapeutics, Inc. (RiMO), is a privately held, clinical stage oncology drug development company that aims to address unmet medical needs and improve patient care. Our proprietary Radio-immuno Metal-Organic (RiMO) technology platform greatly enhances the efficacy of X-ray radiotherapy via the unprecedented radiotherapy-radiodynamic therapy (RT-RDT) mode of action. RiMO clinical candidates are intrinsically non-toxic and greatly reduce X-ray doses needed to eradicate local tumors in mouse models. The RiMO technology also allows to combine multiple therapeutic modalities to increase efficacy while simultaneously reducing toxicity. RiMO products are especially potent in combination with checkpoint blockade inhibitors by increasing T cell infiltration into lowly immunogenic solid tumors.
Coordination Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (CPI) is a privately held oncology drug development company that aims to address unmet medical needs and improve patient care. Its key technology, licensed from the University of Chicago and developed in the research group Prof. Wenbin Lin, is based on nanoscale coordination polymers (NCPs) which are constructed from metal-connecting points and organic bridging ligands via self-assembly processes. NCPs can combine the advantages of both organic and inorganic nanoparticles to afford an entirely new family of nanotherapeutics that overcome many drawbacks of existing drug delivery systems by virtue of tunable compositions, sizes and shapes, high drug loadings, ease of surface modification, and intrinsic biodegradability. NCPs allow for the co-delivery of synergistic chemotherapeutics and/or biologics with disparate physical and chemical properties; such chemotherapeutic and or biologic combinations cannot be delivered with existing nanotechnologies. The NCP technology enhances therapeutic efficacy while reducing general toxicity and overcoming drug resistance in several cancer models.
YINGMING ZHAO, PHD
Professor, Ben May Department for Cancer Research, The University of Chicago
Yingming’s main research interests lie in developing and applying MS-based proteomics technologies to discovery of undescribed cellular pathways (with current focus on protein post-translational modification (PTM) pathways and epigenetic mechanism) and identification of biomarkers for precision medicine. He uses an integrated approach, involving proteomics, biochemistry, molecular biology, and cell biology to decode PTM networks that have implications for human health and are not amenable to conventional techniques. His lab recently discovered nine types of new lysine acylation pathways: propionylation, butyrylation, crotonylation, malonylation, succinylation, glutarylation, and 2-hydroxyisobutyrylation, 3-hydroxybutyrylation, benzoylation. They identified about 500 new histone marks, which more than doubles the number of previously described histone marks that were discovered over the past few decades. They identified and characterized protein substrates, specific binders and regulatory enzymes for the new PTM pathways. His laboratory demonstrates that the new PTM pathways have critical roles in epigenetic regulation and cellular metabolism. And these pathways contribute to physiology changes and cellular dysfunctions associated with diverse inborn metabolic diseases, therefore offering new avenues for therapeutic intervention. Yingming also uses the proteomics technology for identifying proteomic signatures, proteins and protein PTMs (including histone marks), that can classify tumors and predicting drug sensitivity. He is a co-inventor of numerous patents and co-authored 175 peer reviewed papers (H-Index: 80).
Yingming Zhao received his Ph.D. degree from the Rockefeller University under Professor Brian Chait in 1997. He is a co-founder and scientific advisor for multiple biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.
I am a tenured Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences?and Experimental Therapeutics, College of Pharmacy at the University of Iowa. I have over two decades experience in organic synthesis, medicinal chemistry and drug discovery and development. InnoBioPharma, LLC is a drug discovery and development company I founded in Iowa in 2014. InnoBioPharma is dedicated to developing the next generation of anticancer drugs. We have developed several novel drug candidates (two first-in-class drug candidates in preclinical studies) based on natural molecules found in plants and marine sponges. These drug candidates are particularly effective against aggressive and metastatic cancers that lack effective drug therapies, e.g. triple negative breast cancer, brain cancer, and melanoma. We also have a robust pipeline of novel cytotoxic payloads for antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) that are being marketed and are available for licensing.
