The Bio Report

Efforts to develop effective therapies to treat Alzheimer’s disease have been stymied by a long history of clinical failures. Those disappointments have included two, late-stage failures of AC Immune’ Crenezumab, which the company is developing with it partner Roche. The two companies are continuing to pursue the drug under the belief that treating patients earlier in the progress of the disease will be critical. We spoke to Andrea Pfeifer, CEO of AC Immune, about the company’s efforts to identify and treat Alzheimer’s at its earliest stages, its efforts to develop a vaccine against the condition, and why she believes the future of Alzheimer care will involve combination therapies similar to what has emerged in the area of cancer.

The study of microbes and their interactions is changing our understanding of biology, but only a small fraction of microbial species have been cultured. One of the challenges researchers have faced is the limits of existing tools used to study microbes. We spoke to Peter Christey, co-founder and CEO of GALT, about our emerging understanding of the microbiome, the need for a technological transformation of microbiome-based science, and how his company is hoping to fuel the emergence of new insights with its high-throughput technology to isolate and cultivate microbes.

Cofactor Genomics believes RNA provides a better means than DNA and other biomarkers to diagnose disease, monitor health, and enhance treatment decisions. The company’s Predictive Immune Modeling provides insight into a cancer patient’s immune response at the tumor to determine whether an individual is likely to response to an immunotherapy. We spoke to Jarret Glasscock, founder and CEO of Cofactor Genomics, about its RNA diagnostics, the case for the use of multidimensional biomarkers, and the challenges it faces with physician adoption and reimbursement.

Scientists can understand individual tumors at a molecular basis, but clinician don’t yet routinely profile and treat cancers based on this knowledge. Strata Oncology, with drug developers as its customer, is providing tumor profiling to cancer patients in the hopes of directing them into appropriate clinical trials. We spoke to Dan Rhodes, co-founder and CEO of Strata, about the state of precision medicine, Strata’s business model which works around the often-difficult issue of reimbursement for in vitro diagnostics, and the company’s long-term plan for building a commercial diagnostics business.

Bellicum Pharmaceuticals is developing cellular immunotherapies that modulate T cell function through controllable molecular switches. The company is developing these immunotherapies to treat a range of cancers, as well as rare inherited blood disorders. The company believes the ability to modulate these cells once they are in the body will provide safer and more effective immunotherapies. We spoke to Rick Fair, CEO of Bellicum, about the company’s approach, how its molecular switches work, and its current therapeutic pipeline.

Senti Bio is using synthetic biology to build intelligence into cell and gene therapies, altering the way they act depending on the changing biological circumstances they may encounter in the body. Doing so may lead to safer and more effective therapies and address such things as the tumor microenvironment and mechanisms cancer have to grow, spread, and become resistant to treatments. Ahead of his appearance at the SynBioBeta conference that runs October 1-3 in San Francisco, we spoke to Tim Lu, co-founder and CEO of Senti Bio, about the company’s efforts to engineer a new class of intelligent medicines, its ability to design therapies that hit multiple targets, and its strategy to leverage its technology to reach beyond oncology through partnerships.

Nurix Therapeutics is harnessing the body’s natural process for controlling protein levels to target and degrade proteins that drive cancer and other diseases. Its small molecule therapies control key enzymes responsible for protein breakdown and can be used to modulate the levels of proteins within cells. The company believes it can leverage the approach to treat a range of diseases. We spoke to Arthur Sands, CEO of Nurix, about the company’s discovery platform, its pipeline of cancer therapies, and its recent collaboration with Gilead Sciences to discover and develop drug candidates against up to five targets.

The biopharmaceutical industry has been embracing artificial intelligence as a way to address complex issues of drug design and development, but Aktana is betting that such big data analysis can improve decision-making around sales and marketing too. Aktana’s AI technology integrates with a company’s customer relationship management system to synthesize data from a wide variety of sources and guide marketing teams and sales reps about such things as which physicians to contact, when to do so, and how to best approach them. We spoke to David Ehrlich, president and CEO of Aktana, about the company’s decision support products, how they work, and the case for using AI to improve sales and marketing decision-making.

When David Fajgenbaum was in medical school, he became stricken with a rare autoimmune disease that nearly killed him. Though he recovered, he would suffer recurring, life-threatening flares only to discover the poor state of research into condition. Fajgenbaum chronicles his rare disease journey and his efforts to drive research and find treatments in his new book “Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope into Action.” Fajgenbaum, who is executive director of the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network, will be featured at this year’s Global Genes Rare Patient Advocacy Summit, which begins in San Diego September 18. Ahead of the summit, we spoke to him about his experience as a rare disease patient, his efforts to find treatments for his conditions, and how his innovative approach to developing a patient-driven research agenda has provided a roadmap for other rare disease organization to follow suit.

Among the many challenges to developing stem cell therapies is the need to match donors to recipients and the risk of graft vs. host disease that requires the use of immunosuppressants. Athersys has developed a stem cell therapy platform known as MultiStem that makes use of a type of stem cell that doesn’t carry the risk of causing an immune response. What’s more, cells from a single donor can be expanded to provide potentially millions of doses to treat a wide range of conditions making it a scalable, off-the-shelf therapy. The company’s is in late-stage clinical testing of its cell therapy for the treatment of ischemic stroke, a leading cause of serious disability. We spoke to Gil Van Bokkelen, CEO of Athersys, about the company’s MultiStem platform, how it works, and the range of indications it is pursuing.