Living Therapeutics
A better way to combat disease
Wednesday, March 31 at 12pm PT / 3pm ET
“Living” therapeutics are a surprisingly broad class of interventions and in the midst of exponential R&D growth and growing clinical acceptance. The class includes cell, gene, microbiome and phage modalities. While research and in particular clinical approval, is relatively new the foundations are as old as humans. For example, ancient Egyptians used leeches for certain medical issues; sound old, sound crude, sound barbaric? Well in 2004 the FDA approved the use of leeches as a biological medical device and the patient benefits are impressive (link).
Frankly, to me using biology to fix or treat biology is less barbaric than some of the approaches we’ve taken in the last 50 years. Biological systems, like humans, our cancers, our diseases and the pathogens that infect us are heterologous, evolving, dynamic and personalized (n=1). And this battle is exactly that, a battle. This war is US vs. THEM (well, us vs. us for cancer and autoimmune). Following the metaphor, “classical” Western medicine in many respects is like bringing a knife or a nuke to a gunfight. The discovery of antibiotics transformed human history and has saved countless lives, but the horizon of usefulness is clearly visible today — it was an arms race and given about a century, the bacteria won. Why? Because they evolved and penicillin didn’t (knife in a gunfight). Bacteriophage (“phage”) are bacteria’s natural enemy and this approach, while nascent and complicated, is bringing a gun into this battle. So is the microbiome sector.
President Nixon initiated the “war against cancer.” Fifty years later, chemotherapeutics and nuclear medicine are some of our most used armaments. The underlying concept is based on the observation that cancer cells tend to replicate faster than normal cells and the strategy is to kill the cancer faster than the patient (nuke in a gunfight). Effective yes, but is this less barbaric than using leeches? Leeches might be “gross” but I’d prefer to spend an hour swimming through leech infested waters over an hour with a chemo drip in my arm any day … and so should you! Why? Because our bodies know how to repair the leech bite and the leech actually helps you initiate the process; chemo is poison, literally!
T-cells are part of our body’s natural defense system and at the tail end of the last century researchers began exploring using these to treat cancer. The first CAR-T cell therapy, Kymriah®, was approved in 2017 (based on stunning results!) and today over 500 clinical trials are underway and there is an “alphabet soup” of approaches in development (gun to a gunfight). These are just a few examples from the opening act of living therapeutics. There is amazing work being done and we are honored to welcome three pioneering entrepreneurs to our upcoming webinar where we’ll explore the frontier of living therapeutics and the different approaches in this domain.
Kenichi Nogami, Co-founder and Co-CEO at Metcela
Larry Weiss, CSO and Founder at Symbiome
Yug Varma, CEO at Phi Therapeutics
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation, and agriculture.
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