Date: Aug 27, 2017 Author: Rebecca Lurye Source: (
click here to go to the source)
Cybrexa is a start-up trying to develop a new class of cancer therapies to treat tumors. a team of serial investors have spun a new venture out of tumor-fighting technology developed at Yale University.
Venture capitalists Per Hellsund, Kevin Rakin and Kevin Didden -- who have led half a dozen businesses that sold for more than a combined $1 billion -- launched Cybrexa this year after raising $6 million from individuals, investment firms and Connecticut Innovations, the state's enterprise-funding entity.
Over two years, the young company will try to develop chemotherapy-enhancing drugs that target cancerous cells while sparing the healthy tissue around them.
"It's really like a heat-seeking missile toward tumors," said Yale physician-scientist Dr. Ranjit Bindra, Cybrexa's chief scientific adviser. "I know it sounds over the top but we're really re-writing the rules of what makes a drug good and what drugs are possible to deliver to humans."
Ranjit Bindra, co-founder of Cybrexa, left, and Per Hellsund, president and CEO of the company, in the chemistry lab of their New Haven office.
Ranjit Bindra, co-founder of Cybrexa, left, and Per Hellsund, president and CEO of the company, in the chemistry lab of their New Haven office. (Lauren Schneiderman / Hartford Courant)
Working out of an 8,000-square-foot lab in New Haven's Science Park, Bindra and chief medical adviser Peter Glazer, a therapeutic radiology and genetics professor at Yale, hope to identify the most effective combinations of chemotherapy and DNA inhibitors, a class of drugs that prevent cells from repairing themselves after they are damaged or killed.
They're using technology that Glazer helped develop with Yale molecular biophysicist Donald Engelman and the University of Rhode Island. It's based on a chemical compound that forms a corkscrew-like structure when it comes into contact with acidic cells.
If successful, that chemical reaction will only drill into and deposit toxic chemotherapy treatments in cancerous tumor cells, not healthy tissue, "thereby making a drug that's both more effective in terms of reducing the size of a tumor but also would have less of these horrible side effects that so many people are plagued with," Hellsund said.
The therapy has the potential for general use but Cybrexa will develop it with particularly deadly tumors in mind, like those formed by ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer and breast cancer, he said.
While the company is new, it's built on partnerships that were years in the making between the group of Connecticut academics and entrepreneurs.
[Business] Spurned Hartford ballpark developer, city square off in first day of trial over Dunkin' Donuts Park development »
Bindra joined Glazer's research lab in 2000 as a medical student and later earned his Ph.D. there. In 2005, the two oncologists created their first business, Helix Therapeutics, with Rakin, who they met through Yale's Office of Cooperative Research.
Dan Marshall, the director of medicinal chemistry at Cybrexa, performs an aqueous extraction in the chemistry lab their New Haven office. Cybrexa is trying to develop a new class of cancer therapies to treat tumors.
Dan Marshall, the director of medicinal chemistry at Cybrexa, performs an aqueous extraction in the chemistry lab their New Haven office. Cybrexa is trying to develop a new class of cancer therapies to treat tumors. (Lauren Schneiderman / Hartford Courant)
While that company, which developed DNA-based treatments for HIV/AIDS and genetic diseases, fell apart in 2010, the three founders didn't suffer.
Rakin became CEO of Advanced BioHealing, a Westport regenerative medicine company that sold for $750 million. He later co-founded a biotech venture capital firm, HighCape Partners, in New York City, and partnered with two other investors, Hellsund and Didden.
Most recently, Hellsund was president and CEO of CyVek, a Wallingford pharmaceutical company that was bought for $104 million in 2014. Didden is president and CEO of venture capital firm CiDRA in Wallingford, which seeks out innovations in the industrial and manufacturing industries.
Meanwhile, Bindra became a faculty member at Yale, where he and Glazer continued treating cancer patients and advancing their research.
[Business] Last-minute struggle over Bridgeport casino flares up on legislature's final day »
Their return to the business world began with a cup of coffee, Bindra says.
On a cold, rainy day in fall 2015, he and Rakin met at Blue State Coffee in New Haven. They talked a lot about the last five years, their love of building companies and the importance of timing.
The technology behind Helix, for example, had finally advanced enough that another company had licensed it to carry on Bindra and Glazer's work, leaving them open to new opportunities.
So when Bindra told Rakin that he was interested in starting something new, the investor told him, "I want you to meet a guy," Bindra recalled. A few weeks later, he met Hellsund, who would become president and CEO of Cybrexa in January.
"All of it just clicked," Bindra said. "Now we're starting this company with all the lessons from the past."
[Business] Pratt & Whitney workers prepare thousands of care packages to mark $1 million USO partnership »
The one thing that hasn't changed for the Groton native is his motivation.
Bindra enrolled in medical school because his father, a chemist at Pfizer, told him he belonged there. Two years into his program, Bindra's father was diagnosed with cancer. He carried out his research in Glazer's lab across the street from the cancer clinic where his father was treated. And a few months before Bindra's graduation, his father died.
For the young researcher who once considered leaving science, the loss galvanized his interest in finding new therapies.
"That sort of influence just drives you to do better for patients with these kinds of cancers," he said. "That's what's exciting about this company."
