"Golden Ticket" contests

Congratulations to Rubik Therapeutics and RADD Pharmaceuticals, winners of Bristol Myers Squibb’s 2021 Golden Tickets for LabCentral. Here is how they describe their work:

• Rubik Therapeutics, co-founded by Murray Robinson, Ph.D., in 2021, is on a mission to develop best-in-class engineered cell therapies for solid tumors by leveraging its data-driven discovery platforms. The company is backed by Illumina Accelerator.
• RADD Pharmaceuticals is focused on previously undrugged cancer targets. The startup is backed by the early-stage venture capital firm Canaan.

Congratulations to Lucy Therapeutics and Vincere Biosciences, winners of Bristol Myers Squibb’s 2020 Golden Tickets for LabCentral. 

• Lucy Therapeutics (LucyTx) is a mitochondrial platform company currently focused on small molecule treatments for Rett syndrome and Parkinson's disease. LucyTx’s platform has led to the discovery of targets and molecules which can improve critical mitochondrial dysfunction in these diseases and address their complex organ symptomatology. Leveraging advanced chemical matter for these targets, LucyTx can quickly answer key questions about the pathways critical for disease modification. By targeting mitochondrial outcomes, this opens the opportunity for a peripheral biomarker approach for these diseases, which are being pursued in both of the company’s programs.
• Vincere Biosciences develops small molecule therapeutics to slow or halt Parkinson’s disease, empowered by a suite of computational tools alongside traditional biology and drug discovery expertise. To slow the decline of mitochondrial quality that leads to neurodegeneration, Vincere seeks to enhance the removal of damaged mitochondria which may lead to disease, by modulating mitochondrial quality control mechanisms such as mitophagy. By increasing mitophagy to recycle these damaged mitochondria, Vincere works to increase the number of healthy mitochondria and counteract this key deficit in Parkinson’s disease brains.

Learn about the winners of Bristol Myers Squibb’s 2019 LabCentral Golden Tickets, Carmine Therapeutics and STIMIT, here. 

• Carmine Therapeutics is pioneering a new class of genetic medicines based on red blood cell extracellular vesicles (RBCEVs) as redosable allogeneic therapies. These homogeneous, non-immunogenic and stable vesicles can be exogenously engineered, at scale, without culture expansion, to carry large nucleic acid payloads (at least 11 kilobases), and surface functionalized with targeting ligands to increase bioavailability in specific tissues and cell types. This technology, published in Nature Communications, forms the foundation of Carmine's fully modular and robust REGENT platform that aims to revolutionize nucleic acid therapies.
• STIMIT aims to disrupt how, when and where cancer immunotherapy is deployed to dramatically improve patient outcomes. Specifically, STIMIT has developed a hydrogel from a natural, biodegradable, FDA-approved polymer to enable extended localized release of cancer immunotherapy in the context of surgical tumor resection, which is the standard of care for most cancer patients with solid tumors. While most approaches in oncology attempt to treat macroscopic disease, STIMIT is reprogramming the post-resection milieu from immunosuppressive to immunostimulatory and thereby improving the efficacy and safety of immunotherapy relative to traditional routes of administration.

Learn about the winners of Bristol Myers Squibb’s 2018 LabCentral Golden Tickets, ReviveMed and Strand Therapeutics, here.

• ReviveMed is pioneering an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery platform by leveraging metabolomics. ReviveMed is working to overcome the difficulties of identifying a large set of metabolites for each patient, based on technology developed at MIT and published in Nature Methods. It further translates metabolomic data into novel therapeutic insights for drug and drug response biomarker discovery. Currently, ReviveMed is collaborating with pharmaceutical companies and pursuing internal drug discovery programs, initially focused on metabolic diseases.
• Strand Therapeutics’ goal is to make mRNA therapies safer and more effective by programming the location, timing and intensity of therapeutic protein expression inside a patient’s body using mRNA-encoded logic circuits. These circuits can implement cell-type specific expression by sensing and classifying the unique miRNA expression signatures of cells, as well as controlling the dosage of protein expression by responding to exogenously administered small molecules. The technology was developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and published in Nature Biotechnology and Nature Chemical Biology.

Hear from 2018 LabCentral Golden Ticket Winners Strand Therapeutics and ReviveMed 

Learn about the winners of Bristol Myers Squibb’s 2017 LabCentral Golden Tickets, Neutrolis and Remora Therapeutics, here.

• Neutrolis is a preclinical drug discovery company focused on researching new potential treatment options for inflammatory diseases where uncontrolled neutrophilic inflammation may be implicated, such as lupus and sepsis. Neutrophils are the predominant white blood cells present during acute inflammation. When patients are unable to regulate this inflammatory process, it can lead to worsening of disease. Using its proprietary genetic technology platform, Neutrolis is developing therapeutics with the goal of neutralizing excessive neutrophilic inflammation, as well as companion diagnostics to identify patients who are most likely to benefit from such therapeutics.
  
• Remora Therapeutics is a preclinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing novel platelet-based cell therapies. Platelets are best known for their role in blood clotting, but they are also involved in the pathogenesis of many major human diseases, including cancer and conditions of autoimmunity. Remora’s proprietary technology is designed to engineer platelets to fight disease, and improve the quality of life for patients living with debilitating illness.

Hear from 2017 LabCentral Golden Ticket Winner Neutrolis 

Learn about the winners of Bristol Myers Squibb’s 2016 LabCentral Golden Tickets, PanTher Therapeutics and Suono Bio, here.

• PanTher Therapeutics is working to revolutionize the treatment of inoperable, locally advanced solid tumors − studying the direct delivery of existing, already proven chemotherapy agents directly onto the tumor for consistent, slow release over time. The company designed its novel delivery method to potentially eliminate the toxicity and debilitating side effects that chemo agents can produce when delivered systemically through traditional IV or oral administration. Its first potential indication is pancreatic cancer, a particularly lethal disease that affects more than 53,000 Americans annually, where excruciating symptoms arise from the primary mass invading nearby vital organs. By changing the route of administration to target just the tumor, PanTher is designed to increase the amount of drug reaching the intended destination with the aim to enhance therapeutic efficacy. Eliminating adverse outcomes may also help to lower healthcare costs. Pancreatic cancer accounts for about three percent of all cancers in the U.S. and about seven percent of cancer deaths. A privately held company, PanTher is completing pre-clinical studies prior to initiating human trials and exploring opportunities for partnerships to expand its product pipeline.
  
• Suono Bio, a preclinical stage company, has developed breakthrough technology − the “SuonoCalmTM” system − designed to potentially enable ultra-rapid delivery of therapeutics across tissues, including the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Preclinical studies have demonstrated that the ultrasound-based technology can deliver small molecules, proteins, and nucleic acids locally and systemically, validating further study of the SuonoCalm system. Designed as an easy-to-use device to enable patients to self-administer medication at home, the SuonoCalm technology may also be applicable to a broad set of conditions outside of the GI tract.
  

Congratulations to Lime Therapeutics, MabSwitch Inc. and Tezcat Biosciences, winner of Bristol Myers Squibb’s 2022 Golden Tickets for BioLabs@NYULangone. Here is how they describe their work: 

• Lime Therapeutics - Lime Therapeutics is a fast-growing biotechnology company focused on making a difference for patients. They are a spinout company developing new technology invented at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and are using their breakthrough LipidSense™ platform to hunt for novel targets and create new drugs that modulate aberrant lipid metabolism in many forms of cancer, metabolic diseases and neurodegenerative disorders.
• MabSwitch Inc.  - MabSwitch develops regulatable antibodies that vastly improve patient outcomes resulting from their application as next-generation immunotherapeutics, diagnostics and immunoaffinity reagents.
• Tezcat Biosciences - Tezcat Biosciences is committed to the research and development of novel biologic-based therapies to treat the most aggressive cancers. The first-generation technology has been optimized for tumor-specific killing, solid tumor penetration, and manufacturability.  

Congratulations to Waypoint Bio, winner of Bristol Myers Squibb’s 2021 Golden Tickets for BioLabs@NYULangone. Here is how they describe their work: 

• Waypoint Bio, founded by David Phizicky, PhD, and  Xinchen Wang, PhD, in 2021, is a startup working to develop novel approaches to treat dosage-sensitive diseases such as haploinsufficiencies. Waypoint is building a genomics and machine-learning platform for high-throughput screening that can extract high-dimensional multiplexed cellular features. Their platform enables profiling of cellular processes linked to gene dosage that are unobservable by other screening approaches.

Congratulations to NAVAN Technologies and Weatherwax Technologies, winners of Bristol Myers Squibb’s 2022 Golden Tickets for MBC BioLabs. Here is how they describe their work:

• NAVAN Technologies - NAVAN Technologies, Inc. is an enabling technology company commercializing a novel non-viral delivery platform to radically accelerate genetic engineering of human primary cells. The patented NanoStraw technology provides direct intracellular access into hard-to-transfect primary human cells for efficacious delivery of any cargo. By using a physical, non-perturbative mechanism for delivery, the challenges of viral-based cell manufacturing (time, cost and technical difficulties) are eliminated, resulting in fewer, faster operational steps
• Weatherwax - Weatherwax Biotechnologies is a seed-stage drug discovery platform company developing the next generation of induced-proximity medicines.

Congratulations to Altay Therapeutics and VastBiome, winners of Bristol Myers Squibb’s 2021 Golden Tickets for MBC BioLabs. Here is how they describe their work:

• Altay Therapeutics, founded by Ali Rayet Ozes, PhD, and Osman Nidai Ozes, PhD, in 2019, is a preclinical-stage drug discovery company that develops lifesaving therapies by targeting disease-causing transcription factors (TFs). The company’s platform technology enables discovery of small molecule binding sites within intrinsically disordered domains. The company has completed proof-of-concept studies by developing first-in-class inhibitors targeting previously undruggable TFs for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), Ewing’s Sarcoma, prostate cancer and facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). Altay Therapeutics now is testing the efficacy of its compounds by collaborating with world-class experts at Georgetown University, Saint Louis University School of Medicine and University of California San Francisco. Based on the knowledge gained from its platform, the company is able to efficiently drug numerous other disease-causing TFs to develop more specific therapies and improve the quality of life for an even greater patient population.
• VastBiome, founded by Kareem Barghouti, MBA, Kovi Bessoff, MD, PhD, Peter McCaffrey, MD, and Ayin Vala, MS, in 2019, is a DNA-first drug discovery company mapping the human gut microbiome to make medicines. The company accesses small molecules produced from the gut and uncovers their function. VastBiome is using proprietary methods in genomic sequencing, artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to discover biomarkers and novel therapeutics for the most challenging immunologic disorders. The company’s collaborators include a number of leading institutions such as the Cleveland Clinic, Moffitt Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine.