Life Sciences Companies Make Pharma Pitches in PowerPoint

Life sciences companies presenting at CED’s Life Science Conference recently also make PowerPoint presentations. After 11 minutes on stage, another presenter took their place.

Immunotherapy company Heat Biologics broke from script and announced a $10 million series B round to complete one midstage study on its lead treatment candidate and two early stage trials for two other indications.

The Chapel Hill, North Carolina drug developer wasn’t the only one seeking money, and it wasn’t the largest fundraising target by far. Durham-based SCYNEXIS is raising a $25 million to $30 million round. And University of North Carolina spinout Vascular Pharmaceuticals is raising up to $23 million. Here’s a rundown of the clinical programs the pharma companies are looking to finance.

Heat’s lead drug program is an experimental lung cancer treatment in phase 2 clinical trials. Heat Bio’s proprietary technology reprograms tumor cells to pump out antigens to fight disease. CEO Jeff Wolf said that when the company was founded in 2008, the thought of prompting the immune system to fight cancer was a dream. But developments of immunotherapies from Dendreon (NASDAQ:DNDN) and Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) have shown that such treatments are possible. Heat Bio’s treatments are off the shelf, meaning that they don’t use patient cells to develop a personalized medicine treatment. That result is a treatment that costs less. Besides the lung cancer phase 2 study, Heat Bio plans phase 1 clinical trials for bladder and ovarian cancers. The $10 million fundraise would finance clinical development for all three indications.

Read the full article in Medicity News

Source of image: free Tables PowerPoint template