Open Source Cancer Drugs
By Lisa LaMotta
Chris Guiffre, CEO of Cerulean Pharma, says, "You haven't heard of me yet," but he hopes that pairing the cancer drugs his tiny biotech makes with offerings from major pharma companies will change that.
Guiffre's company Cerulean is a cancer company that makes nanoparticular-drug conjugates that are designed to be used with other oncology drugs. He told the an audience at the BIO conference in Philadelphia on June 16 that he's not interested in doing exclusive deals with a large upfront and instead has designed a drug that can be used in an "open source" strategy and combine with various other oncology agents.
"We have to develop our drug in multiple combinations, but we don't have the cash balance to do that. My colleagues and I said, 'how are we going to explore this new drug in the clinic in combination with multiple different agents?'" said Guiffre to those attending the session entitled "Moneyball: Strategies for Structuring Deals Between Small Biotechs and Big Pharma.
"An exclusive deal right now would be enticing, because an exclusive deal would give me an upfront payment and that would feel good for about 24 hours, but then we'd start spending it really fast and be boxed in. So we said that's the end of the spectrum we don't want to be on," said Guiffre.
"Stealing from the terminology used in the tech world; we want to see if we can provide our drug in an open source fashion to anyone who wants to study it in combination, as long as there is a rationale," the exec added.
So far, Cerulean doesn't have any partnering "notches on its belt" said Guiffre, but the company has two drugs in its pipeline that he believes have the right versatility to be attractive to a variety of big pharma partners.
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