Month: April 2021

Tak lands at Candel, with plans to speed up development of immunotherapy’s play late-stage assets

GlaxoSmithKline, SV Health Investors and Sofinnova are among the backers of a new Oxford-based biotech which has raised $30m in series A financing and boasts a strong line-up of academic founders. CEO Neil Weir outlines Sitryx’s raison d’etre.

View Article: https://hbw.pharmaintelligence.informa.com/SC123958/GSK-Backed-Sitryx-Launches-With-Six-Immunometabolism-Eggs-In-Its-Basket

Emerging Company Profile: Candel Therapeutics, formerly known as Advantagene, has hired a new leadership team and is aiming for a Phase III data read-out in prostate cancer in 2023.

View Article: https://scrip.pharmaintelligence.informa.com/SC143448/Candel-Aims-High-In-Next-Stage-Of-Cancer-Immunotherapy-Mission

Dr Tak’s new role will help oversee scientific ventures to find transformative treatments for conditions such as cancer, neurodegenerative disease and autoimmune diseases.

I’ve been interested in this field since before the term “microbiome” was coined. In the 1990s, I conducted research at Leiden University Medical Center on the role of microorganisms in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We were the first to take biopsies from the target tissues of inflamed joints of patients with RA and other forms of inflammatory joint disease, and analyze them using 16s PCR. We detected microbial DNA in different forms of arthritis and predicted that it would be derived from the gut.

To explain the story briefly, I became interested in the cholinergic and anti-inflammatory pathway due to serendipity.

An exodus of pharma R&D leaders to small biotechs and start-ups over the last year reflects a new phase in the ecosystem’s churn of talent.

“Our philosophy is to be very open with the external world in terms of target identification and target validation. We compete in terms of molecules.”

Although inflammation is a necessary biological process in response to injury and disease, at abnormal levels it is also responsible for a significant annual health burden. Immune-mediated inflammatory disease is present at a prevalence of about 7% in the Western world and with an ever aging population this is set to rise. While treatments for some of the more common inflammatory disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) do exist, there is still a large unmet patient need as many sufferers do not achieve remission of symptoms even when using currently available therapies. Immuno-inflammation is one of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)’s key therapeutic areas of interest. Helen Albert speaks to Paul-Peter Tak, Senior Vice President and Chief Immunology Officer at GSK, about his career and the work he is doing at GSK to encourage scientific innovation and target unhealthy inflammation in all its forms.

Just over 140 years ago, the world’s first industrial-sized R&D laboratory opened. As someone who’s devoted his working life to finding new R&D breakthroughs, I’m envious of the explosion of activity that made the lab’s owner, Thomas Edison, one of history’s most remarkable inventors. But it’s his process of innovation that inspires me, as much as his life-changing creations.