Allan Appel Photo
Rastelli with the “FACS” machine.
It looks like a blue-tinted coffee maker with a toaster tucked underneath. It sounds like an old-fashioned fax machine.
In fact, it’s a FACS.
Make that “Flourescent Activated Cell Sorting” machine. It’s one of the favorite machines in the recently expanded labs of a Science Park-based start up on the verge of trials for a pioneering new way to treat multiple myeloma, an aggressive blood cancer, and potentially other diseases as well.
Yale chemist David Spiegel.
Scientists and principals at KLEO Pharmaceuticals, on the third floor of 25 Science Park, were on hand Wednesday morning to receive Sen. Chris Murphy’s Innovator of the Month award and to mark the opening of expanded lab space.
KLEO was founded on research by Yale chemist David Spiegel. It has progressed to the point where the first human studies of its synthetic immuno-therapy drug will likely be launched at the end of this year or in early 2020, said CEO Doug Manion.
In the relatively new field of immuno-therapies to treat cancer, the general idea is to trick or “recruit” the body’s natural immune cells into attacking a tumor that is evading them, explained Luca Rastelli, KLEO’s chief science officer.
The body’s immune cells are on regular surveillance and are usually good at attacking invaders from the outside. However, a tumor, which is a cell occuring within the body that goes kaplooey, is not as easily recognized. That’s why the immune cells need to be recruited to recognize the tumor and then to kill it.
Enter biologics, naturally occuring bodily agents, to do the job.
KLEO cell biologist Ann Marie Rossi at the FACS machine.
KLEO is pioneering the creation of a synthetic molecule that can recruit those immune cells faster and are more versatile than biologics. Ideally they can enhance that therapy, can be more easily produced, and well may be more effective.
Furthermore, if the research bears out, they will be safer for patients, Rastelli said.
In the language of one of KLEO’s announcements to the industry: “CD38-ARM is designed to recruit endogenous antibodies to multiple myeloma cancer cells, targeting them for destruction by natural killer (NK) cells and macrophages.
All that was celebrated in a certificate presented to Manion and KLEO by David Tusio, representing Sen. Murphy, who was unable to attend the event.
KLEO’s synthetic molecule, provisionally called KP1237, makes a bridge or an arm between the immune cell and the tumor so the immune cell can go to work and kill the tumor.
Manion explains how drug works to a chemistry-challenged reporter.
“We redirect the antibodies in the body to target tumors that they previously were not recognizing,” CEO Manion explained.
The company was founded in 20015, based on Spiegel’s 2007 research, received critical initial funding from the Connecticut Innovations Fund, the state’s venture capital arm, and other investors. In four years the company has grown to 18 staffers, mainly scientists. It plans another 30 percent increase in the next phase.
KLEO recently announced a partnership with Tokyo-based biopharmaceutical company PeptiDream, which Manion described as a “discovery collaboration.”
One of the subtexts of the meeting, which included a roomful of KLEO’s investors and collaborators in the Yale and New Haven biotech community, was to cheer each other on in the making of New Haven an industry hub.
“We have very smart people and we’re the most beautiful state in the country,” Manion said.
Where Will The New Labs Go?
Manion receives the innovator recognition from Tusio.
One looming obstacle is real estate, according to Yale University Office of Cooperative Research Managing Director Jon Soderstrom, who spoke at the event.
He praised the focus of Spiegel’s lab, resulting in the coming up of marketable products that will save peoples’ lives. But what of other companies, in earlier stages than KLEO? Where will their labs go?
“Currently there is no lab space in the city of New Haven,” Soderstrom said. “Where are we going to fit new companies?”
For the first time, he said, in his 25 years of bringing together researchers, funders, and officials who help find space for entrepreneurs to launch, “demand has outstripped supply.”
He said he’s working with approximately 40 companies, many biotech. Four of those are poised to be funded and ready to start seeking out and renting space. Typically a beginning company will need 3,000 to 4,000 square feet, he said. They’re having trouble finding space in town.
Science Park’s own current tenants are asking for space that is not available anywhere in the complex, he said.
All that, however, was not front and center on Wednesday, KLEO’s day of celebration. This company has the space it needs to take the next steps. They’ve already tested their molecules, successfully, stopping and shrinking tumors in mice, and a monkey is scheduled for the first primate test next month, in Nevada, Rastelli said.