A new drug company is banking on an unlikely natural substance to improve the treatment of cancer, and southeastern venture firm BVM Capital apparently sees the potential, too.
BVM bucked trends in healthcare investing by seeding a new biotech venture spun out of Louisiana State University. With $300,000 in seed funding provided through BMV’s Themelios Venture II LP Fund, the new company, K94 Discoveries, will develop drug conjugates that target certain hormone receptors found on tumors.
In his lab at LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Dr. William Hansel studied how luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone receptors (LHRH) found populating the surface of a variety of cancer cells could be harnessed to deliver cancer cells to a tumor. To create a drug conjugate, which couples a targeted delivery method with a therapeutic agent, he combined LHRH with curcumin, an antioxidant found in the spice turmeric.
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It’s an ancient natural remedy, but curcumin’s cancer-preventing abilities have actually been studied pretty extensively in recent pre-clinical and clinical trials at universities and cancer centers across the world. It’s thought to slow tumor growth and block the proliferation and invasion of tumor cells. The problem is that curcumin has poor water solubility, which has limited its therapeutic potential.
K94 Discovery’s drugs are designed to overcome that challenge, the company said in its funding announcement Tuesday. Initially it’s focusing its R&D work on pancreatic cancer, but is also do research in ovarian and breast cancer. Toxicology tests are expected to start soon, with clinical trials slated for 2015.
As an interesting side note, Hansel named the new company after the U.S. Army unit he commanded in World War II, symbolizing its willingness to take great risks and persevere against all odds.
Esperance Pharmaceuticals, another Baton Rouge biotech startup, is also developing anticancer drug partly based on Hansel’s work.
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