| Name | Title | Contact Details |
|---|---|---|
Michael Goldstein |
Senior Director, General Counsel | Profile |
Natural molecules or derivatives make up more than half of the current drugs on the market with applications to nearly every disease known to humans. Salicylic acid, morphine, cannabinoids and insulin are a few examples. Our specialty is in producing these, and new targets, using a fast and scalable platform based on engineered microbes.
EcoSynthetix is a Lansing, MI-based company in the Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, & Biotech sector.
Rani Therapeutics has developed the RaniPill™, a platform technology for the oral delivery of biologic drugs. Millions of patients with chronic conditions require biologic drugs that today can only be injected. These injections are painful and inconvenient and often affect both patient compliance and quality of life. The pharma industry has been searching for decades to convert injectables into pills, and we believe the solution is the RaniPill™ capsule. We have demonstrated bioavailability similar to subcutaneous injections in both preclinical and clinical studies. Rani has an internal pipeline of molecules, and active collaborations with Novartis and Takeda. The research and technology behind Rani Therapeutics came out of InCube Labs, a multi-disciplinary life sciences R&D lab focused on breakthrough medical innovations. InCube is led by Mir Imran, a prolific medical inventor, entrepreneur, and investor.
At LAVA, we are focused on applying our expertise in gamma-delta T-cell engagers (TCEs) to transform cancer therapy. We refer to our compounds as gamma-delta bispecific T-cell engagers, or gamma-delta bsTCEs. Our platform generates therapeutics that specifically activate a unique and relatively abundant effector gamma-delta T-cell subset called Vγ9Vδ2 (Vgamma9-Vdelta2) T-cells that have the ability to trigger activity of immune cells of both the innate and adaptive immune system. Our gamma-delta bsTCEs have demonstrated superior efficacy and safety profiles compared to other bsTCE approaches in preclinical studies and show preferential activity against tumor cells thereby potentially limiting toxicity in healthy tissue. To date, we are the only company developing bispecific gamma-delta T-cell engaging antibodies for the treatment of cancer. We are building a pipeline of gamma-delta bsTCEs that have applications in both solid and hematologic malignancies. Our lead program, LAVA-051, targets the tumor specific antigen CD1d, which can be overexpressed in multiple myeloma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and acute myeloid leukemia (AML), among other tumor types. LAVA-051 will enter a Phase I/IIa study in 1Q21.