Part 1 of this article
But like any serial entrepreneur who starts company after company, Schlessinger continues to see a need for new research, and new commercial operations to bring them to fruition. In 2001, he helped found Plexxikon, a leading biotech firm in the discovery and development of small molecule pharmaceuticals. Using a proprietary discovery platform, the company has been enormously successful in developing a portfolio of clinical and pre-clinical stage programs in several therapeutic areas, including cardio-renal disease, CNS, inflammation, metabolic disease, and oncology.
And the potential for commercial success has not been lost to investors and the venture capital community. VCs may not have Dr. Schlessinger’s scientific knowledge (and few people do, whether inside or outside of the academic world), but they do recognize potential when they see it. In January of 2009, Schlessinger’s third venture, Kolltan Pharmaceuticals, announced that it raised of $35 million in preferred stock financing to bring more of his groundbreaking scientific discoveries in the lab to reality. Kolltan represents enormous potential, not just for commercial success, but for important oncology therapy treatments. The science behind the company revolves around important discoveries made in Schlessinger’s lab that will lead to a new generation of monoclonal antibody oncology therapeutics. The discovery involves novel molecular mechanisms that underly the activation of receptor tyrosine kinases (RTK), which govern how cells work.
In plain language, it’s important research that provides more insight into how cancer grows—and how it might be slowed down or stopped. When kinases don’t work like they’re supposed to, the messages that are transmitted from outside a cell to inside of the cell can get garbled, and the result can lead to the growth of a cancerous tumor. Think of it as a garbled phone call. You get a call from your boss and the line is fuzzy. You think the boss told you to tell a big client to drop dead, but he really said to get him tickets to Club Med. The result of course, is disastrous. The same thing happens inside of cells when they get a garbled message. Schlessinger’s research is meant to clear up the phone lines over which cells communicate.
First-generation drugs in RTK-related disease have made some progress, but have limitations as well—and the goal of Kolltan is to build on that first generation of drugs to create a more effective treatment.
True science is never science in isolation, and important medical discoveries will always be driven by innovation, entrepreneurship, and vital partnerships with industry. Through this approach, scientists like Dr. Schlessinger will be able to see their research become reality—and more people will be helped in the process.