Founder of Immunotherapy Startup Acepodia Talks on How to Play the Startup Game
With multiple CAR-T Therapies receiving FDA approval starting from last October, immunotherapy is now the new black in biotech. H. Spectrum was honored to have Dr. Sonny Hsiao as our guest speaker, founder of Acepodia, share his technology development and fund-raising experiences as an immunotherapy biotech startup. Acepodia is a biotech startup focused on combating cancer using Antibody Cell Conjugation (ACC) and has raised more than 33 million US dollars in Silicon Valley.
To begin the lecture, Dr. Hsiao gave a brief introduction about the core technology of Acepodia — Antibody Cell Conjugation, which is the generation of anti-cancer immune cells by directly attaching antibodies against cancer cells onto immune cells through chemical modifications. Armed with the arsenal of antibodies, these anti-cancer immune cells are like deadly missiles with a GPS-system to cancer cells, locating and vanquishing them with precision and efficiency. Therapies using these kind of immune cells are thus called Antibody Conjugated Effector T-cell Therapies (ACE-T Therapies).
“ACE-T has multiple advantages”, said Dr. Hsiao, one of which is its ability to circumvent the traditional hair loss side effect of target therapies. This is because of its high precision of anti-cancer antibodies, guiding these immune cells to not attack just any fast-dividing cells, thus leaving the patient’s hair mostly unharmed. In addition, the cultivation of said anti-cancer immune cells only takes a few hours. This is significantly more efficient than CAR-T therapies, which it may take up to more than 3 weeks, and when it comes to effectiveness, ACE-T therapy guarantees a “non recurrence” of cancer for up to 10 years post-treatment. Acepodia is currently focusing on developing ACE-T therapies against lung cancer, breast cancer, endometrial cancer and ovarian cancer, aiming to provide patients with better treatments and pleasant experiences.
Dr. Hsiao pointed out that there are already many big players in the immunotherapy market. To join the game, Taiwanese biotech companies should focus on developing immune cells with lower prices and faster growth. The aforementioned antibody cell conjugation is an example of one of such technologies that has great potential to achieve this goal. Dr. Hsiao also stressed the different strategies biotech startups should take. “Making an analogy, pharmaceutical giants are like a grand army with thousand of soldiers. As a biotech startup with limited resources, it’d be foolish to implement the same approach.”, said Dr. Hsiao, “Biotech startups should value themselves as special forces. Strike effectively and efficiently, and most importantly, remember your goals. That is why startups in the immunotherapy field should narrow their focuses, such as optimizing the cultivation of T-cells. ”
Dr. Hsiao believes that the most crucial key to becoming a successful startup is “Partner”. While it is important to have someone who is familiar with the company’s products and technology, people who know how to maximize the commercial value of the product is indispensable as well.
When it comes to running a startup, Dr. Hsiao reminds us that the true purpose of setting up a milestone is to achieve it, not merely for fundraising or the application for government funds. “We should learn from Israeli startups. ” , stated Dr. Hsiao. “Every milestone and budget set is the result of thorough consideration and should be the same both internally and externally, no double standards should be considered.” Dr. Hsiao shared his experience of working with a former CEO of a big pharmaceutical company. The R&D budget of the team was an astronomical number, exceeding the yearly budget of the National Science Council, but every penny was spent according to plan, and from this, we can clearly learn that every item in the budget was well thought through.
Dr. Hsiao as well provided some tips of fundraising and words of encouragement for our startups. “Always inform the closing time of your fundraising to your potential investors. It is quite effective. Do remember: a valuable product is valuable no matter where you are. Never lose faith in yourself.”
About the Lecturer
Dr. Sonny Hsiao founded Adheren in 2010 in Silicon Valley and developed “antibody cell conjugation”, a technology that transforms human T-cells and Natural Killer Cells into cancer combating weapons. During 2015–2016, Adheren was invested by several US venture capital firms and was renamed Acepodia, Inc. In 2017, Acepodia raised more than a million US dollars in funding.
Author: Jeffrey Wu
Reviser: Sarah Wang, Ariel Cho
