Hacking Cancer Cell Communication to Survive Incurable Cancer

What is the critical gap in cancer treatment that you are addressing? 

More people have been surviving cancer over the past decade. This is the good news. The bad news with that increase in survival rates are largely due to screening and early detection. Very limited progress has been made to help patients with late stage or metastatic cancer, In fact, only 3% – 14% of cancer patients survive late stage cancer, depending on the type of cancer. This is both terrifying and unacceptable.

What is the key product development milestone you seek to fund?

Oncoxome’s approach is groundbreaking: We overcome cancer by hacking cancer cell communication. Why does this work? Because the starting point of cancer becoming resistant and untreatable begins with cancer cells talking to each other, exchanging information to help eachother and to become stronger. Oncoxome captures those messages and replaces them with messages of death, tricking the cells to eliminate them. If OncoXome can bring this treatment to the clinic, we can improve quality and longevity of life for patients with late stage cancer – which would be a huge step in the treatment of cancer. Further, we do not expect our approach to be toxic with debilitating side effects, like so many cancer treatments out there. We believe in respecting the patient’s body and quality of life.

How will funds be used?  Please provide a breakdown of major budget items. 

Our next milestone is crucial: We need to confirm that our approach is effective and well tolerated in mice with advanced cancer. We will show that our therapy can reach and kill cancer cells anywhere in the body.

What key resources have/will you acquire to facilitate the accomplishments of the above product development milestone?  (current funding sources, strategic partnerships, talent, infrastructure) 

Funds will be used to advance our science: rent the lab space to conduct our studies, pay scientists, buy the consumable, and collaborate with an officially labeled vivarium for animal models.

If successful, how would you leverage funds raised through our portal to access key funding from other sources (i.e. matching grants, investments)

We have been accepted by the Lundquist Institute to perform our studies with scientists who are leaders in the field. The Institute offers an incubator space with the resources and equipment we need to conduct our work, as well as the vivarium. We are ready to start.

We have already raised $200,000 from angel investors and through friends and family. We are submitting over 10 grants this year to US agencies. We are applying for funded programs at biotech accelerators such as IndieBio.

We are endorsed by organizations such as Biocom, California Life Sciences, Women in Bio, Science Inc Innovation Space, Larta Institute, and the NIH.

If your technology were to disappear in the “Valley of Death” funding bottleneck, how might this impact society? 

Despite years of intensive research and billions of dollars invested worldwide, the prognosis of patients with advanced cancer remains disastrous. These cancers are no longer treatable via surgery and the current treatments have very limited efficacy while being extremely aggressive and toxic. Many patients are terrified of cancer, they are terrified of the treatments and sometimes even refuse to get treated. The unmet need is huge. Our technology is based on a revolutionary concept: hacking cancer cell communication: 1) by inducing cancer cell death, 2) by preventing mechanisms of resistance so that the cancer doesn’t come back. This approach is meant to treat advanced cancer effectively all the while limiting side effects and toxicity for the patients.

If our revolutionary approach were to disappear in the Valley of Death, it would greatly impact the therapeutic development in oncology and the hope of patients for an efficient and safe treatment for cancers that are currently untreatable by our medical therapeutic arsenal.

ERICK GAMELIN, MD, PhD

Co-Founder and CEO & CSO 

Dr. Gamelin is a senior executive in the pharmaceutical industry, a former professor of oncology, leader of a research lab, and a globally renowned expert in oncogenomics and molecular pharmacology. He has dedicated thirty years to oncology, both in academia (he did part of his post-doc at the NIH, Therapeutic Branch) and in the pharmaceutical industry. As a physician, he has treated over 10,000 cancer patients throughout his career. As such, he is intimately familiar with the treatment options that have come to the market in the last three decades. While in academia, Erick participated in bringing several drugs to market such as paclitaxel, oxaliplatin and nab-paclitaxel. As a pharmaceutical executive, he participated in bringing denosumab, blinatumomab to market. He is a co- inventor on eight international patents and has published more than 140 scientific articles in international peer-reviewed journals. Early in his career, Dr. Gamelin launched an oncogenomics research laboratory, which he led for twenty years, focusing on tumor progression and cancer cell resistance. His laboratory became certified by the French National Institute of Scientific and Medical Research and the French NCI. He was cofounder, in 2008, of a startup, Oncology Drug Pharmacology Monitoring (ODPM), whose purpose is to detect patients at high risk of chemo-induced severe toxicity and to provide guidance for dose adjustments to their clinicians. Today, ODPM provides its services to many European teams. In 2005, he was appointed CEO of the West Oncology Institute – University Cancer Center by the French Health Minister who also awarded him the title of “Chevalier in the National Order of Merit” for outstanding achievements. In that role, Dr. Gamelin reported directly to the Minister of Health and managed over 500 employees, including 55 MDs and 35 PhDs, and operated an annual budget of $45 million. He designed and built a new university cancer center with a budget of $100 million. Frustrated by the situation with cancer, Erick chose another path to move therapeutics forward and joined the pharmaceutical industry in 2009. As a senior executive at Pfizer, Macrogenics and Dynavax (where he was Senior Vice President in charge of the oncology department), he led the clinical development of multiple Phase I, II, and III clinical trials. In the process he acquired invaluable experience in interacting with the FDA, EMA and national regulatory agencies. Lastly, he supervised a thesis about CRISPR cas9 to determine the clinical implications of “variants of unknown significance” in ovarian carcinoma. In 2019, he had an intensive course from Berkeley Extension on the different CRISPR Cas techniques, especially Cas9, dCas, Cas12a, Cas 13a. He recently presented a work to the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles Annual Congress.

AURIANE GAMELIN, MBA

Co-Founder & COO

Auriane has held operational roles at Fortune 500 companies for over a decade, starting with Xerox France. After completing her MBA, she managed the production of TV shows at Walt Disney Animation Studios and later Warner Brothers. Later, she worked at the fast-growing Snap Inc., where she vastly increased the platform’s international markets after hiring her own team and implementing proper strategies. With this operational experience, Auriane decided to fully commit to advancing cancer research and started OncoXome with her father, Erick. She also earned certifications in drug development processes from UC-Berkeley and completed a training program in clinical investigations at the FDA headquarters.

Since co-founding OncoXome, Auriane has been a speaker on several panels (RESI/JPM, USC, California Life Sciences), she won several pitch competitions including the Startup Stadium pitch competition at the international BIO convention in San Diego, the International RESI conference pitch competition, the Women In Bio showcase.

LAURENCE HANES, MD, PhD

Chief Regulatory Officer

Laurence has 30 years of extensive experience in pharmacovigilance, drug safety and regulatory throughout the lifecycle of products, from first in human to post- approval, including filing activities and interactions with Agencies. Experience includes case processing, medical review, regulatory reporting, signal detection, data analysis, benefit-risk evaluation, risk management and risk communication, filing activities, and inspection preparedness. Board certification in Clinical Toxicology and strong experience in clinical practice as Associate Head of Poison Control Center, bedside physician and Assistant Professor in University hospitals. Member of expert advisory groups for Government Agencies in the following areas: pharmacovigilance, toxicovigilance, evaluation dossiers for marketing authorization, and preparedness for bioterrorism and major disasters. Bench research activity focused on mechanisms of drug toxicity, resulted in 2 patents and was recognized with Merritt Awards by the American Association for Cancer Research. Management of physicians, pharmacists, nurses and scientists, and oversight of vendors in academia and industry.