| Name | Title | Contact Details |
|---|---|---|
Luciana Mansolelli |
Chief Quality Officer | Profile |
Ilya Koltover |
Chief Transformation Officer | Profile |
Natural molecules or derivatives make up more than half of the current drugs on the market with applications to nearly every disease known to humans. Salicylic acid, morphine, cannabinoids and insulin are a few examples. Our specialty is in producing these, and new targets, using a fast and scalable platform based on engineered microbes.
The trillions of microbes that call us home – the human microbiome – perform critical functions that preserve our health including helping develop our immune system, manufacturing nutrients such as vitamins, and harvesting energy from the diet. Alterations of the human microbiome are increasingly recognized as a key factor in autoimmune, metabolic, infectious and many other diseases. For millions of years, humans have co-evolved with this community of microbes, communicating in an ancient language that holds critical clues about how autoimmune and infectious diseases develop. This language is based on a system of signals that our resident microbes use to successfully colonize us, such as byproducts of bacterial metabolism and factors that bacteria use to adapt to human niches. Recent discoveries have shown that most of these signals do not lead to disease, rather, they promote our long-term survival. Vedanta Biosciences is developing an innovative class of therapies that modulate pathways of interaction between the human microbiome and the host immune system. Vedanta Biosciences was co-founded by PureTech and a group of world renowned experts in immunology and microbiology.
At LAVA, we are focused on applying our expertise in gamma-delta T-cell engagers (TCEs) to transform cancer therapy. We refer to our compounds as gamma-delta bispecific T-cell engagers, or gamma-delta bsTCEs. Our platform generates therapeutics that specifically activate a unique and relatively abundant effector gamma-delta T-cell subset called Vγ9Vδ2 (Vgamma9-Vdelta2) T-cells that have the ability to trigger activity of immune cells of both the innate and adaptive immune system. Our gamma-delta bsTCEs have demonstrated superior efficacy and safety profiles compared to other bsTCE approaches in preclinical studies and show preferential activity against tumor cells thereby potentially limiting toxicity in healthy tissue. To date, we are the only company developing bispecific gamma-delta T-cell engaging antibodies for the treatment of cancer. We are building a pipeline of gamma-delta bsTCEs that have applications in both solid and hematologic malignancies. Our lead program, LAVA-051, targets the tumor specific antigen CD1d, which can be overexpressed in multiple myeloma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and acute myeloid leukemia (AML), among other tumor types. LAVA-051 will enter a Phase I/IIa study in 1Q21.
PURE Bioscience develops and markets technology-based bioscience products that provide solutions to numerous global health challenges. PURE`s proprietary high efficacy/low toxicity bioscience technologies, including its silver dihydrogen citrate (SDC)- based antimicrobials, represent innovative advances in diverse markets and lead today`s global trend toward industry and consumer use of "green" products while providing competitive advantages in efficacy and safety. Patented SDC is an electrolytically generated source of stabilized ionic silver which formulates well with other compounds. As a platform technology, SDC is distinguished from competitors in the marketplace because of its superior efficacy, reduced toxicity and the inability of bacteria to form a resistance to it. PURE is headquartered in El Cajon, California (San Diego metropolitan area).
Innopsys is a Sunnyvale, CA-based company in the Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, and Biotech sector.