Cour Pharmaceuticals secured $30 million in financing this week to reprogram the way your immune system works.
The Chicago-based company's nanoparticle platform uses the immune system’s learning power to induce tolerance to specific problematic antigens, and CEO and founder John Puisis thinks it could be used to address a wide range of immune and inflammatory conditions.
Cour’s lead product for celiac disease has become one of its most promising, and while stopping short of saying that the company is developing a cure to celiac disease, Puisis indicated that the antigen-specific therapies could be a real game changer.
"We did a celiac disease study a few years back, and when people were dosed with our drugs, the way doctors diagnosed them, they would no longer have been diagnosed with celiac disease," Puisis said.
The financing round was led by Alpha Wave Ventures. As part of the financing, Chris Dimitropoulos, managing director of biotechnology at Alpha Wave Global, will join Cour's board of directors.
With 20-plus years experience in biotech, Puisis said he’s constantly looking to be at the forefront of cutting-edge technologies and bring them to the clinic.
“We’re going after some of the worst autoimmune diseases out there and worst allergies where there is no cure, and [aiming to] be transformative. We want to change people’s lives,” he said. “With peanut allergies, for example, current therapies will protect against one peanut. We want to protect the person completely from peanuts. In Type 1 diabetes, we want to stop that disease in its tracks.”
The company first formed in a “small closet” at the immunology lab at the medical school at Northwestern University.
From there, the university found the company some space at the Illinois Science + Technology Park, where it now has a number of labs. Cour has since grown to just under 50 employees.
Why Chicago
While Chicago was always Puisis’ only choice to launch the company, he said that the city's transformation into a budding life-sciences hub made it an easy choice.
“I think Chicago could be a fabulous hedge given the East and West Coasts are so saturated with companies. I think the talent pool here is phenomenal. The only thing that needs to happen, and it is happening slowly, is we need more capital,” he said.
He said that there’s a lot that Chicago can offer that places like Cambridge, Massachusetts, can’t.
“Cambridge physically has its limitations. I could tell you that everyone I know there has extremely bad commutes. There’s not a lot of housing near work,” he said. “Here you could be a young couple and live and work in the city. Mass transportation is actually good. And our talent pool with Rush [University] and Northwestern is phenomenal.”
