Silk is one of the hottest materials and shows much promise for medicine, particularly in targeted drug delivery. Cocoon Biotech, a Boston-based startup, wants to build on that promise with a silk injectable to be used for joint treatment. The company is raising a seed round up to $750,000, including $500,000 in equity.
The funding will take the company through animal studies and product optimization for the osteoarthritis product, CEO Ailis Tweed-Kent said.
Cocoon has licensed co-founder David Kaplan‘s silk ideas for joint and veterinary medicine, plus ophthalmology. Kaplan is the chair of biomedical engineering at Tufts University. (Check out Kaplan’s “partner-in-crime” — crime meaning research — Fiorenzo Omenetto’s TEDTalk on silk’s potential.)
The company’s technology “reverse engineers the cocoon.” Kaplan learned how — to oversimplify — to take the solution the silkworm makes in its glands, then go back to where the silkworm starts, which could lead to hydrogels, microparticles, films and sponges. Tweed-Kent was in clinics, seeing patients with osteoarthritis and yearning for more innovation in the space. When she connected with Kaplan, she said “serendipity” took its course, founding Cocoon in July 2013. The company was recently a finalist in the M2D2 competition.
Almost 30 million Americans have osteoarthritis. Right now, osteoarthritis requires constant or repetitive treatment — from NSAIDs to physical therapy, which only subdue pain rather than cure the disease, or surgery, which doesn’t allow for preservation of anatomy and limits activity, such as total knee replacement.
Tweed-Kent said a real solution must meet the two major obstacles of the disease:
- The mechanical component — that wear and tear over time that leads to inflammation and cascades to eliminate cartilage
- The product should be able to be delivered locally to “take advantage of biochemical pathways”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Cocoon is pursuing several products that Tweed-Kent said could meet these needs. The material is most exciting maybe because of its potential to be combined with drugs to target different biochemical pathways, she said.
Though several such products are in preclinical development, the first product Cocoon will push forward is a lubricant that “reduces that friction and inflammation and in many ways can halt the progression of disease,” Tweed-Kent said.
The lubricant requires a PMA route, and Tweed-Kent said she expects the product will be commercialized by 2020.
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