SURGE Founder and CEO Dr. Michael Goldberg successful the lab/courtesy SURGE Therapeutics
Post-surgical recurrence and metastasis relationship for 90 percent of cancer-related deaths, thing Dr. Michael Goldberg, laminitis and CEO of recently debuted SURGE Therapeutics, knows each excessively well.
Goldberg told BioSpace he has a consciousness of motivation indignation against cancer. He mislaid his puerility champion person to the disease, and since founding SURGE successful 2018, he's mislaid 3 friends to post-surgical crab recurrence.
“This is thing very, precise idiosyncratic to me, arsenic good arsenic professional,” Goldberg said.
In fact, Goldberg has been doing crab probe since precocious school. On his 16th birthday, helium picked up a publication connected crab and told his parents helium was going to cure the illness by his 17th birthday.
While helium missed that one-year goal, “that simply means that I person unfinished concern and I'm not readying connected letting up until I succeed,” helium said.
So, Goldberg went each in, leaving his station arsenic a prof astatine Harvard Medical School to motorboat SURGE, which reeled successful $26 cardinal successful Series A financing led by Camford Capital. Camford was joined by Khosla Ventures, Intuitive Ventures, Pitango HealthTech, 8VC, Alumni Ventures and the Cancer Research Institute. Notably, SURGE is the Institute’s first-ever task investment, Goldberg said.
Nine cardinal patients acquisition surgical tumor resection each twelvemonth globally, with 700,000 successful the United States alone. Forty percent of them volition person their crab instrumentality wrong 5 years.
SURGE has developed an intraoperative immunotherapy exertion called SURGERx, based connected groundbreaking enactment conducted by Goldberg’s Harvard lab.
The Theory
The attack is based connected adjusting the timing and method of immunotherapy delivery.
“Changing how, erstwhile and wherever crab immunotherapy is deployed should dramatically heighten diligent endurance outcomes,” Goldberg said.
There’s nary uncertainty that immunotherapy has changed the outlook for immoderate crab patients, but conscionable 15 percent deduce durable benefit, helium noted.
“In trying to recognize wherefore effect rates to crab immunotherapy stay truthful unsatisfyingly low, it dawned upon maine that it wasn't simply a substance of identifying the optimal targets for large molecules to cause the target,” Goldberg said. “We're delivering our therapies successful the incorrect mode and to the incorrect patient.
“Most crab medicine is administered passim the assemblage to patients with bulky tumors. This means that astir 95% of the medicine fails to get to the tumor, alternatively causing broadside effects successful steadfast tissues that yet bounds the dose that tin beryllium given,” helium explained.
Surgery, the modular of attraction for coagulated tumors, tin origin recurrence and metastasis of the cancer, Goldberg said.
“You privation to skip to the beforehand of the translational queue erstwhile the immune strategy is fundamentally arsenic steadfast arsenic it's ever going to beryllium post-diagnosis,” helium said.
Surgery, however, tin origin transient but acute immune suppression. SURGE’s attack specifically addresses this surgery-induced immune suppression.
Currently, crab country is lone a carnal intervention. Physicians typically bash not administer immoderate benignant of immunotherapy during surgical tumor resection. Goldberg called this a “hugely missed opportunity.”
“You're telling maine you had entree to precisely the close spot astatine precisely the close clip and you're not concentrating oregon retaining 100% of the effectual dose close past and close there? We tin alteration that,” helium said.
The Practice
SURGE’s proprietary injectable biodegradable hydrogel is injected astatine the tract of surgical tumor resection.
The hydrogel is modular and tin beryllium loaded with biologics, tiny molecules oregon hydrophobic drugs. It tin beryllium injected into the bare abstraction wherever the tumor erstwhile resided, careless of the signifier and size oregon determination successful the body. “So we tin therapeutically code galore antithetic targets of interest,” Goldberg said.
Goldberg, on with post-doc pupil Dr. Chun Gwon Park, conducted aggregate experiments successful mice with aggressive, metastasizing cancer. They delivered a azygous dose of a azygous cause successful an extended, localized mode astatine the tract of tumor resection.
“This had ne'er earlier been seen successful this rodent model, which had typically required repeated medication of quadruplet operation immunotherapy,” Goldberg said. “These were the astir compelling information that I've ever seen.”
Their probe was published successful Science Translational Medicine and formed the ground for SURGE.
The caller institution has drawn the involvement and committedness of biotech luminaries similar Moderna co-founder Robert Langer, who serves arsenic seat of SURGE’s technological advisory board, and Francis Cuss, M.D., erstwhile CSO astatine Bristol Myers Squibb. Elizabeth Jaffee, M.D., past president of the American Association for Cancer Research besides sits connected the board.
SURGE volition deploy the Series A funds to the further improvement of SURGERx, grow the squad and “generate worth successful collecting objective data.” The institution volition taxable its archetypal Investigational New Drug exertion “shortly,” Goldberg shared, with a consequent programme to travel successful the “hopefully not excessively distant future.”
In April, the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence announced “Project FrontRunner,” which is aimed astatine advancing caller therapies successful the advanced/metastatic mounting wherever attraction is not expected to beryllium curative.
“There's plentifulness of objective information to enactment the conception that patients respond amended if they person little tumor load and healthier immune systems,” Goldberg said.
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