Bexion Pharmaceuticals is the Blazer winner in the Disruptors category for KY Inno's inaugural Fire Awards. To read more about the other Blazer winners, click here.
Bexion Pharmaceuticals has an overriding goal in the work it does: Tackling cancer.
Bexion, a startup that spun out of an accidental discovery at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, is based in Covington, Kentucky. It was founded in 2006 by Dr. Ray Takigiku, who was studying an inherited childhood disease and discovered a compound, comprised of human protein combined with a fat molecule. He put it on cancer cells and saw that the cancer cells died.
More than 15 years later, Bexion is one of the highest-funded companies in the commonwealth of Kentucky and employs 24 people.
It has raised over $80 million with no venture capital nor recognizable institutional money, said Margaret van Gilse, Bexion’s vice president of business development. Instead, its relied on grants, such as from the National Cancer Institute and state matches.
But the interesting aspect of developing drugs is the further along you get in drug development, the more expensive it becomes, van Gilse explained
Now it’s in the midst of a Series C funding round, which van Gilse said is really important because it’s going to get the company to a point where it will have strong data to support two clinical trials in addition to continued research and development efforts.
Here's more from van Gilse in a Q&A:
What (or who) has been essential to the company’s success?
The founder, Dr. Ray Takigiku. One of the skillsets he has — besides being incredibly smart and brilliant and understanding drug development — is he knows how to build a really good team of people. It’s that old saying: “It takes a village.”
A lot of us have worked together for a long time now, and I’ve never worked with such a team of people that we all have different backgrounds, but [are all] very smart, very dedicated to Bexion, very dedicated to bringing the drug to people and also taking care of our shareholders.
There’s a real strong culture here that was created by Ray. He started it, but yet, if you look at the success that we’ve had, it really is not just one person. It is clearly the entire team. But I also have to say, the community around us has been very supportive of investing in Bexion and understanding our story.
What is the biggest challenge Bexion is facing going into 2023?
For a company like Bexion, it’s always money. We have not had any issues with raising money. We’ve been very successful, and I believe we will continue to be. I think we’ll be able to close out this round by the end of the year.
But how that impacts us, which is challenging, it bumps out our timeframes, and it bumps out our milestones.
Sometimes there’s things that we can’t control in drug development. For example, we can raise the money, but maybe recruiting patients goes a little bit slower. It bumps out that time that you can actually analyze the data.
Why Kentucky? What advantages do you see here?
We love Kentucky. … The cost of living is good here. We’re fortunate because we’ve been able to pretty much hire from this region.
We did have to go outside for a CEO and CFO, but the majority of our folks live in Kentucky, but being on the border of Ohio, some of our folks do live in Ohio.
Part of that reason is Procter & Gamble had a pharmaceutical division for a long time, and they got out of that business in 2006. There were a lot of engineers and pharma folks that wanted to stay in the region, and we’ve hired a number of those people.
What’s the next big milestone Bexion is chasing?
This newly diagnosed metastatic colorectal cancer patients [trial]. It’s a very important trial for us because it’s designed in such a way to give us information about our drug in combination with the standard of care that maybe will be synergistic together.
Also to potentially minimize the side effects of that particular standard of care and causing peripheral neuropathy. So that these patients might be able to stay on their cancer treatment for a longer period of time.
Why we’re excited is we’re hoping to dose that first patient in the next couple of weeks.
Other finalists in the Disruptors category:
Dan-O’s Seasoning
(Louisville)
Dan-O’s Seasoning was in 130 retail locations before the pandemic, but thanks to its presence on TikTok, the Louisville-based food company was able to build the brand from scratch. In October, Dan-O’s Seasoning entered into an agreement with Tops Friendly Markets across the nation as well as Wegmans, Weis Markets, Stop & Shop and Price Chopper in the Northeast, pushing it into over 12,000 retail stores
Party Horses
(Louisville)
Party Horses is a Louisville-based company that’s created a collection of generative nonfungible tokens with tangible, real-world benefits like rare bottles of Maker’s Mark bourbon and tickets to exclusive events, including a May party with Diplo at the Ice House in Downtown Louisville. Roughly 1,200 individuals bought 3,300 Party Horses NFTs, which sold for more than $1.3 million in a 48-hour window in March.
Climavision
(Louisville)
Climavision is a tech company that has developed a weather services and intelligence platform powered by a private network of high-resolution radars, GPS-RO data and proprietary software to improve the timing and accuracy of weather forecasting and to fill low-level gaps in existing weather surveillance.
Talaris Therapeutics
(Louisville and Boston)
Talaris Therapeutics is a biotech firm developing groundbreaking therapies to eliminate the need for chronic immunosuppression in numerous disease areas, including solid organ transplant and severe immune and blood disorders. The company is now in its final stage of clinical trials before seeking FDA approval.
