Invenshure, a Minneapolis-based medical incubator, announced earlier this month it launched MEKanistic Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing oncology treatments.
In preclinical studies, the therapy shrinks tumors with less toxicity associated with current drugs on the market.
MEKanistic was founded by Judith Sebolt-Leopold and Christopher Whitehead at the University of Michigan.
Danny Cunagin, co-founder and co-CEO of Invenshure and CEO of MEKanistic, said he was drawn to partner with MEKanistic because of Sebolt-Leopold and Whitehead’s expertise in commercializing drugs. Both had extensive experience developing drugs at Pfizer prior to joining academia.
Cunagin added they were also early pioneers for this particular cancer target and have completed all the preclinical work.
“It’s a combination of team pedigree, how they designed the drug, how they ran their clinic and what it was going to take to get into the clinic,” he said. “And we knew that we were very capable of providing that part of the equation.”
Invenshure will now begin promoting MEKanistic with potential strategic partners, a process Cunagin called “socializing the asset.”
In the weeks ahead, Invenshure will also launch a round of funding which MEKanistic will use to begin Phase 1 clinical trials early next year.
Cunagin said it’s not uncommon for standalone biotech companies to raise between $100 and $200 million ahead of a clinical trial, but Invenshure’s model is much more capital efficient.
“We feel like we can get through a Phase 1 with roughly $30 million,” he said.
Since its founding in 2012, Invenshure has raised $150 million across three funds, Cunagin said.
Its portfolio of seven companies includes Flywheel, a Minneapolis-based startup that manages data for medical researchers and GeneMatters, a Minneapolis-based tele-health genetic counseling company that was acquired last year by San Francisco-based Genome Medical Inc.
