A startup founded by two MUSC Hollings Cancer Center researchers is the only South Carolina company selected to participate in the SCbioDrive accelerator program this spring.
Besim Ogretmen, Ph.D., and Shikhar Mehrotra, Ph.D., co-founded Lipo-Immuno Tech to provide a vehicle for commercializing their work.
Ogretmen is an international leader in understanding how sphingolipid signaling can promote cancer development. He serves as associate director for basic science at Hollings and director of the Lipidomics Shared Resource.
Mehrotra's specialty is cellular therapies. His work has led to a clinical trial of a patented version of CAR-T cells to treat lymphoma. He also serves as co-leader of the Cancer Biology and Immunology Research Program at Hollings.
Entrepreneurship has become an important part of the therapy development process. Scientists at universities conduct the basic research that forms the foundation of new treatments. But there's often a gap in funding support before the research is far enough along that industry is willing to take a risk on it. That's where researcher-founded startups come into play. Startups, because they are small businesses, become eligible for seed funding that the federal government has set aside for research and development as well as funding from investors.
But navigating business development is a completely new skill set for most researchers.
"Entrepreneurship is not new, but it is not in our blood," Mehrotra said. "We don't know anything about it other than making a company and writing a grant. We have been doing that, but that's not considered true entrepreneurship."
The accelerator program connected them with mentors, who have been meeting with them twice per week to review how they pitch their company to potential investors, what they should be thinking about in terms of adding staff with specific skill sets and the regulatory and intellectual property laws they need to be aware of.
All six startups participating in the program, including companies from as far away as Canada and Ireland, will come together in Charleston at the beginning of June for a Demo Day, where they will be able to network with industry professionals and present their plans.
Ogretmen said they've received good insights from their mentors so far.
"How to actually focus our product lines, what to actually tell the investors, what they want to hear – it's completely different than what academicians like us present. Usually, we go into a deep dive of the science," Ogretmen said.
Ogretmen and Mehrotra have a few promising therapies that are in different stages of development, ranging from preclinical work to the phase I trial of CAR-T cellular therapy. But products must go through three phases of clinical trials before becoming eligible for FDA approval. And although the phase I CAR-T trial looks promising, there's no guarantee it will move to a phase II trial.
"When you come to phase II, where's the money? Who's going to be funding and sponsoring it?" Mehrotra said. "It's a big question, and so we have to look for those kinds of opportunities elsewhere, and that is some of the guidance we're getting from this program."
Both said the program has been invaluable and is something that should be available to more scientists.
