What lies behind the confident, infectious smile of Erika de Simone Molina, CEO and founder of Bioptamers? Perhaps it is the fact that her biotech startup is audaciously close to obtaining the holy grail of modern medicine — a ‘cure’ for all cancers. A raison d’etre borne out of Erika’s turbulent, intensely personal relationship with the disease and with her fascination of the almost inexplicable nature of its biochemistry. To understand cancer at its genesis from a spectrum of possible genetic mutations, and by consequence, cellular processes, to its permutation into distinct physiological disorders, is to glance at the bewildering complexity of life itself. It is this fiendishly difficult puzzle that has so enchanted Erika from childhood.
Born and raised in Brazil, Erika was naturally exposed to a glorious variety of wildlife and soon developed a love for biology that was strengthened throughout her early education well into her doctoral studies of biochemistry at the University of São Paulo. However, this connection transformed into something much deeper when a close friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, and Erika found herself a helpless bystander as the devasting effects of chemotherapy left her friend fatigued and in daily pain — common side-effects caused by the non-discriminative killing of both cancerous and healthy tissue.
How on earth, she thought in disbelief, could these still be the only available solutions for the vast majority of patients in spite of the recent breakthroughs in biotechnology. Fortuitously, through her graduate professor, she discovered a little-known class of molecules, called ‘aptamers’. Aptamers, she learnt, can be either oligonucleotide (short DNA) or peptide (short amino acid chain) molecules which bind to an almost infinite number of targets. A remarkable property, she realized, that could utilised for powerful clinical applications such as drug delivery, whereby one end of the aptamer is designed to bind to a tumour cell and the other a chemotherapy drug such as a taxane – thus when the aptamers are injected into a patient the payload of cell-killing chemicals are delivered only to cancerous cells. Or, as Erika aptly puts it;
“Chemotherapy is analogous to carpet bombing, whilst aptamers act like homing missiles.”
However, to truly eradicate a patient’s cancer, the therapy must be tailored precisely for the individual, this is because cancer is different from one person to the next. That is to say, every tumour expresses a slightly different profile of cell-surface biomarkers (to which an aptamer drug would attach) — yes the plot thickens. Despite much fanfare, current personalized treatments to cancer such as monoclonal-antibody and CAR-T therapies are far too costly and time-consuming to be suitable for large-scale production. Yet aptamers are inexpensive, lower in complexity and easier to purify, characterize and create. The single remaining hurdle is the time-intensive process of selecting tailored aptamers.
Cue Erika’s serendipitous encounter with computer engineer and future Bioptamers’ CTO, Emerson Moretto. It was Emerson’s ingenious solution to replicate a patients’ cellular profile outside of their body in order to automate and accelerate the process of adapter design. To do this he employed microfluidic chips to precisely manipulate and mix together discrete droplets containing aptamers and patient cells (taken from biopsy); through this method, aptamers which exclusively attached to cancer cells could be screened for at high-throughput and selected for manufacture. Thus, together Erika and Emerson held the missing pieces of the puzzle and decided to found Bioptamers, with the intention of bringing affordable, effective and personalized cancer therapies to the masses.
Discussing this journey in her typical charismatic flare, over a coffee break with your correspondent, Erika appears convinced that Bioptamers, now at RebelBio’s venture-capital program in London, is on the cusp of achieving what she only wildly dreamed of just a few years before. Ever the philosopher, she goes on to contemplate the seemingly unlimited possibilities ahead;
“Aptamers can fulfill almost any purpose you can imagine. They can, for instance, be designed to recruit lymphocytes to tumour cells and thereby augment existing immunotherapies, or for applications outside of medicine such as in agriculture whereby water and nutrients are expedited to plant cells to reduce waste and increase yield.”
But for now, Erika remains laser-focused on Bioptamers’ immediate application in the oncology market, and on her personal mission of rendering the comparatively medieval technologies of chemotherapy and radiotherapy obsolete. Ultimately, she believes that cancer will be made a thing of the past, yet she admits the road ahead is long and riddled with even more puzzles. At this last point, a smirk grows across her face, and, in realizing my confusion, she adds, “Don’t worry, we’ll have the last laugh on cancer”.
Bioptamers joined the RebelBio portfolio in our VII programme. Check out who the other five were.
Also, Check out last week’s story on Pregenerate’s founder Julie Rosser.
By Alex Hall-Daniels
We currently have hundreds of companies in the interview process and under 2 months to go until the application deadline — Apply now to RebelBio!
