This week, we have four interviews: Franjo Hanzl, vice president commercial development Europe at Eversana; Stacy Blain, founder and CEO of Concarlo Therapeutics; Jens Hennecke, chief business officer at SOTIO Biotech; and Carl Borrebaeck, chairman of the board of directors of Immunovia and professor at the Department of Immunotechnology at the University of Lund in Sweden.
Concarlo Therapeutics
Concarlo Therapeutics is a U.S.-based preclinical-stage precision-medicine oncology company. It is developing a novel therapy for drug-resistant metastatic breast cancer as a first indication.
Concarlo’s patented IpY, a novel therapeutic peptide, will be the first to hit two targets, both CDK4/6- driven cell proliferation and CDK2-driven drug resistance at the same time, and the first to target p27.
It is a specific cellular pathway to kill cancer cells rather than just slowing their proliferation.
The novel approach relies on the role of p27Kpi, a natural inhibitor, an “on-off” switch that regulates the activities of the major cancer-related proteins, CDK6, CDK4, and CDK2.
Eversana
Eversana is a provider of global services to the life sciences industry.
Its integrated solutions are rooted in the patient experience and span all stages of the product life cycle to deliver long-term, sustainable value for patients, prescribers, channel partners and payers. The company serves more than 500 organizations, including start-ups and established pharmaceutical companies, to advance life sciences solutions.
Labiotech spoke with Franjo Hanzl, vice president commercial development Europe, at the Medicon Valley Alliance annual summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Medicon Village
During NLS Days, Labiotech visited Medicon Village, in Lund, Sweden. While there, we had the opportunity to chat with Carl Borrebaeck. To say he’s involved in biotech would be an understatement. He is chairman of the board of directors of Immunovia and professor at the Department of Immunotechnology at the University of Lund in Sweden, as well as being director of Create Health.
Borrebaeck, former vice president of the University of Lund, has been involved in many companies throughout his career, including Alligator Bio, SenzaGen and PainDrainer.
He received the AKZONobel Science Award 2009, for contributions to cancer proteomics and antibody-based therapy, a Research! Sweden Award 2012 for his medical research of value for patients and health organizations, and the Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences Gold Medal 2012 for outstanding contributions to biomedical science. He was honored as the Biotech Builder of the Year in 2017.
SOTIO Biotech
SOTIO Biotech is a clinical stage immuno-oncology company owned by PPF Group based in Prague, Czechia. The company is building a pipeline of oncology programs by pursuing promising early-stage candidates through strategic licensing, M&A and in-house discovery efforts.
SOTIO has been active in the clinic in 2022. The company initiated two clinical trials, the first was a phase 2 study for its lead IL-15 superagonist, SOT101. The initiation of the AURELIO-04 trial comes on the heels of positive phase 1/1b data, which showed 15 of 19 patients with advanced/metastatic solid tumors demonstrated clinical benefit with SOT101 in combination with pembrolizumab.
The company also plans to enter the CAR-T space with the initiation of its BOXR trial in Q4 2022. SOTIO is well funded into 2023 and plans to use those funds for posting more data across its already promising programs.
We spoke with SOTIO Biotech at BIO-Europe.