For severe and chronic pain management, opioids are often the only option. This class of drugs comes with well-documented risks, including addiction, respiratory problems and overdose. Surzen Biotherapeutics, a startup launching from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), aims to address these risks with their patented peptide technology. By targeting opioid receptor pathways differently compared to traditional approaches, Surzen Biotherapeutics plans to develop effective pain relief without the severe side effects.
Chief Technology Officer Dr Peng Zhou, who co-founded the company while he was a Technology Pioneer Fellow at OIST, says, "From decades of research into opioid receptor pathways, we are excited to launch Surzen Biotherapeutics. We hope to provide acute and chronic pain sufferers with safer, more effective treatments."
Inspired by his father
The name 'Surzen' was chosen to reflect Zhou's late father's name, 'Shu Sheng', which is pronounced very similarly in Chinese. "My father was the reason I first became a scientist. He was always encouraging me to expand my horizons," says Zhou. Following his PhD in Biochemistry at Wuhan University, Zhou joined the lab of Professor Akihiro Kusumi at Kyoto University. It was at this time that Zhou's father was diagnosed with late-stage cancer.
He explains, "When my father became ill, I returned home for six months to care for him. On our frequent hospital trips, I saw multitudes of patients struggling with pain. This was my motivation behind founding Surzen Biotherapeutics; I wanted to develop better pain solutions, particularly for terminal patients. I wanted to ease suffering, and help them enjoy the time they have with their family members."
After his father passed away, Zhou returned to Kusumi's lab, which had since moved to OIST as the Membrane Cooperativity Unit. Using single-molecule tracking techniques, Zhou studied the dimerization of opioid receptors. Traditional opioid drugs target individual opioid receptor proteins (monomers). However, recent studies of receptor signaling pathways suggest that these proteins often form dimers, in which two receptor molecules are bonded together. This dimerization process is known to affect receptor signaling pathways, and is associated with the side effects of opioid therapies. Zhou and team identified peptides which can block dimerization. When co-administered with traditional opioids, these peptides optimize drug performance by reducing tolerance, improving efficacy and reducing severe side effects.
From concept to company
Supported by OIST Innovation, the university's dedicated technology development and commercialization hub, Zhou was able to protect the intellectual property underlying his peptide technology while continuing to validate its potential through several years of preclinical studies in animal models. He was awarded a Technology Pioneer Fellowship from the OIST Proof of Concept (POC) Program, which provided him with funding, access to lab space, entrepreneurship training, and a wide range of business support resources to build the foundation for a start-up.
Through OIST Innovation's global network, Zhou was introduced to James Feliciano, a Venture Partner at Saisei Ventures, who would later become the startup's CEO. Saisei Ventures provided seed funding, while Feliciano brought decades of pharmaceutical industry leadership and commercialization experience to complement Zhou's scientific expertise. With Zhou, Feliciano, and Saisei Ventures, Surzen Biotherapeutics assembled the scientific, business, and financial foundation needed to help transform a promising research project into a venture-backed start-up.
Dr Angela Ares Pita, Manager of the OIST's POC program, comments, "Peng and Surzen Biotherapeutics exemplify what the POC Program was created to achieve. By supporting researchers in translating their lab discoveries into innovations with the potential to benefit society, the POC Program helps bridge the gap between science and real-world impact. We hope Peng's journey inspires more researchers at OIST, in Japan, and around the world to pursue the path from discovery to societal impact."
From Okinawa to the world
The team chose to establish Surzen Biotherapeutics in Okinawa to remain closely connected to OIST's world-class talent and research facilities. While the company is rooted in Japan, Zhou and Feliciano are developing their technology with global markets in mind, particularly the United States and Canada, where opioid use and its associated health risks are amongst the highest in the world. In the United States alone, over 300,000 deaths were attributed to prescription opioid overdoses between 1999 and 20231, underscoring the urgent need for safer approaches to pain management.
The company is already off to a great start, recently winning a grant from the Okinawa Prefectural Government as part of the Okinawa Advanced Medical Technology Infrastructure Development Promotion Program.
When asked about his hopes for Surzen Biotherapeutics, Feliciano says, "Our mission is to make opioid pain management safer and more effective. As one of the first biotherapeutics startups emerging from OIST, I hope we can bring this innovation from Japan to the world, and transform quality of life for those struggling with pain".
To find out more about Surzen Biotherapeutics, please visit https://www.surzenbio.com/.
