🔒Yale Life Sciences Pitchfest marks its 10th round

Cancer cells do not metastasize in cows. That revelation, which holds the potential for developing a way to prevent cancer tumors from growing in humans, was presented Thursday during the 10th Yale Life Sciences Pitchfest, hosted by Yale Ventures at 101 College St. in New Haven and attended by about 700 people. The one-day pitchfest is held annually in December to showcase Yale faculty innovators presenting breakthrough research projects in therapeutics, medical devices and digital health. Thursday’s event featured 33 pitches that included multiple new ways to treat cancer, as well as potential new therapies to treat a genetic neuromuscular disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, neurodegenerative disease, and major heart attacks, as well as an alternative to liver transplants and a way to prevent strokes. The event also serves as the semifinal round of competition among the faculty for a total of $3.2 million in grants to be awarded by the Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale. The $65 million fund “is the flagship life sciences accelerator that we run out of Yale Ventures that helps commercialize the most promising research coming out of Yale Life Sciences,” said Josh Geballe, managing director of Yale Ventures. According to director Morag Grassie, the Blavatnik Fund awards have resulted in $488 million in “follow-on” investments in the startup ventures chosen by the fund. “Our goal is to inspire and educate (Yale) faculty to think more entrepreneurially, and then to help them, with financial support, actually translate their basic research into what could be a new drug or a new platform to discover new drugs,” Grassie said. Since its inception in 2017, the fund has awarded $24 million to 98 projects and seen 46 biotech ventures launched, including many located in New Haven. One example is Quarry Thera, a Yale startup co-founded by Yale professor Craig Crews and former Pfizer Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten. The company recently raised $32 million to develop a new type of drug technology known as “molecular glues,” which help proteins interact in ways that could lead to new treatments. The first innovation pitch Thursday was presented by Mark Lemmon, Ph.D., the Alfred Gilman Professor of Pharmacology at Yale and co-director of Yale Cancer Biology Institute. The latest innovation, he explained, evolved out of studying mammals, including cows. He noted that more than a third of humans develop cancer tumors, and that even if a tumor is removed it will often return. “Few people die of their primary tumor,” he said. “They die when it metastasizes.” Lemmon, who is working with the co-founders of a venture called StromaShield, said they have determined that cancer tumors do not metastasize in cows. “So basically the question was, how can we be more like cows?” he asked. Cows have evolved to have “stromal resistance,” he said, and StromaShield is working to develop a “stroma shield” to prevent tumor cells from “escaping” in humans. “So we set out to try and find the origins of this stromal resistance, and came up with a true first-in-class approach to mimic it, to block metastasis.” The pitchfest provided four blocks of pitches, two blocks in the morning and two in the afternoon. The winning pitches will be decided by 20 judges, with the winners to be announced in February.