What are the key takeaways from this Beyond Biotech episode?

Key insights include: **CTPS1 Selectivity Mechanism:** Dancadostat achieves 1,300-fold selectivity for CTPS1 over CTPS2, meaning healthy tissues can still use CTPS2 to produce CTP normally while cancer cells dependent solely on CTPS1 are starved of DNA building blocks. This selectivity resolves the gastrointestinal toxicity that has historically blocked development of nucleotide synthesis inhibitors.; **Solid Tumor Biomarker Selection:** A high prevalence of CTPS2 loss — through chromosomal deletion or epigenetic silencing — exists across solid tumors, creating a CTPS1-only dependency. StepPharma's strategy is to screen patients for this biomarker before enrolling them in safety expansion cohorts across ovarian, endometrial, and lung cancer, targeting pan-cancer applicability from one drug.; **Repurposing a Safety Signal:** Platelet reduction, initially managed as a side effect in lymphoma and solid tumor trials by using a one-week-on, one-week-off dosing cycle, became the therapeutic endpoint in essential thrombocythemia. Nine patients enrolled in the ET Phase 2 study are all responding, with 50-patient recruitment targeted by summer next year.

What did Andy Parker discuss on Beyond Biotech?

Andy Parker, CEO of StepPharma, explains how the company's lead drug dancadostat selectively inhibits the CTPS1 enzyme to block cancer cell proliferation across three concurrent clinical trials — relapsed/refractory lymphoma, biomarker-selected solid tumors, and essential thrombocythemia — following a €38M Series C raise. Key topics include: **CTPS1 Selectivity Mechanism:** Dancadostat achieves 1,300-fold selectivity for CTPS1 over CTPS2, meaning healthy tissues can still use CTPS2 to produce CTP normally while cancer cells dependent solely on CTPS1 are starved of DNA building blocks. This selectivity resolves the gastrointestinal toxicity that has historically blocked development of nucleotide synthesis inhibitors.; **Solid Tumor Biomarker Selection:** A high prevalence of CTPS2 loss — through chromosomal deletion or epigenetic silencing — exists across solid tumors, creating a CTPS1-only dependency. StepPharma's strategy is to screen patients for this biomarker before enrolling them in safety expansion cohorts across ovarian, endometrial, and lung cancer, targeting pan-cancer applicability from one drug..

How long is this episode of Beyond Biotech?

This episode is 31 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

Beyond Biotech

Turning cancer cell dependencies into targeted therapies

July 10, 2026

31 min episode · 2 min read

Andy Parker

Episode

31 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Career Growth, Productivity, Health & Wellness

AI-Generated Summary

Published Jul 10, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓CTPS1 Selectivity Mechanism: Dancadostat achieves 1,300-fold selectivity for CTPS1 over CTPS2, meaning healthy tissues can still use CTPS2 to produce CTP normally while cancer cells dependent solely on CTPS1 are starved of DNA building blocks. This selectivity resolves the gastrointestinal toxicity that has historically blocked development of nucleotide synthesis inhibitors.
✓Solid Tumor Biomarker Selection: A high prevalence of CTPS2 loss — through chromosomal deletion or epigenetic silencing — exists across solid tumors, creating a CTPS1-only dependency. StepPharma's strategy is to screen patients for this biomarker before enrolling them in safety expansion cohorts across ovarian, endometrial, and lung cancer, targeting pan-cancer applicability from one drug.
✓Repurposing a Safety Signal: Platelet reduction, initially managed as a side effect in lymphoma and solid tumor trials by using a one-week-on, one-week-off dosing cycle, became the therapeutic endpoint in essential thrombocythemia. Nine patients enrolled in the ET Phase 2 study are all responding, with 50-patient recruitment targeted by summer next year.
✓Single-Asset Licensing Caution: StepPharma deliberately avoids outlicensing individual indications to pharma partners because doing so with a single-asset company creates structural complexity that complicates future IPO or M&A outcomes. Instead, the company is pursuing a China joint-venture model as a geographically contained partnership structure that preserves core asset integrity.
✓Pipeline-in-a-Product Fundraising Logic: Running three concurrent indications early-stage provides investors with multiple shots on goal, reducing binary risk. As trials advance toward Phase 3, StepPharma plans to narrow focus — potentially from three indications to two — because late-stage financing requires concentrated capital deployment and investors expect defined, fundable programs rather than broad exploratory pipelines.

What It Covers

Andy Parker, CEO of StepPharma, explains how the company's lead drug dancadostat selectively inhibits the CTPS1 enzyme to block cancer cell proliferation across three concurrent clinical trials — relapsed/refractory lymphoma, biomarker-selected solid tumors, and essential thrombocythemia — following a €38M Series C raise.

Key Questions Answered

•CTPS1 Selectivity Mechanism: Dancadostat achieves 1,300-fold selectivity for CTPS1 over CTPS2, meaning healthy tissues can still use CTPS2 to produce CTP normally while cancer cells dependent solely on CTPS1 are starved of DNA building blocks. This selectivity resolves the gastrointestinal toxicity that has historically blocked development of nucleotide synthesis inhibitors.
•Solid Tumor Biomarker Selection: A high prevalence of CTPS2 loss — through chromosomal deletion or epigenetic silencing — exists across solid tumors, creating a CTPS1-only dependency. StepPharma's strategy is to screen patients for this biomarker before enrolling them in safety expansion cohorts across ovarian, endometrial, and lung cancer, targeting pan-cancer applicability from one drug.
•Repurposing a Safety Signal: Platelet reduction, initially managed as a side effect in lymphoma and solid tumor trials by using a one-week-on, one-week-off dosing cycle, became the therapeutic endpoint in essential thrombocythemia. Nine patients enrolled in the ET Phase 2 study are all responding, with 50-patient recruitment targeted by summer next year.
•Single-Asset Licensing Caution: StepPharma deliberately avoids outlicensing individual indications to pharma partners because doing so with a single-asset company creates structural complexity that complicates future IPO or M&A outcomes. Instead, the company is pursuing a China joint-venture model as a geographically contained partnership structure that preserves core asset integrity.
•Pipeline-in-a-Product Fundraising Logic: Running three concurrent indications early-stage provides investors with multiple shots on goal, reducing binary risk. As trials advance toward Phase 3, StepPharma plans to narrow focus — potentially from three indications to two — because late-stage financing requires concentrated capital deployment and investors expect defined, fundable programs rather than broad exploratory pipelines.

Notable Moment

The ET indication emerged not from a planned strategy but from observing platelet reduction as a recurring safety signal in lymphoma and solid tumor patients. StepPharma reframed that signal as a potential therapeutic endpoint, then validated the hypothesis only after confirming a clean safety profile at doses five to ten times higher than ET requires.

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Episode Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Beyond Biotech, the weekly podcast from Le BioTech. I'm Dylan Kysain, and this is episode 205 for the podcast. Today, I'm delighted to welcome Andy Parker, CEO of StepPharma. With over twenty five years of experience across AstraZeneca, Shire, Zealand Pharma, and Venture Capital, Andy has led StepPharma since 2019. The company is pioneering a targeted approach to cancer and blood disorders by inhibiting the enzyme CTPS one. Their lead candidate, Dankadostat, blocks this pathway that certain cancer cells and activated immune cells rely on while sparing healthy cells that use a related CTPS two enzyme. In this episode, we'll dive into the science behind this mechanism, explore StepPharma's expanding pipeline, and discuss their recent €38,000,000 series c financing. We'll also look ahead to the future of precision oncology. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Andy Parker. Andy, welcome to Beyond Biotech. Dylan, thanks very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Andy, way back when, tell me, what was it that got you interested in science to begin with? I think that's easy. That tracks back to school days. That goes back to having a fantastic biology teacher that, brought so much enthusiasm to the subject that it just got me got me hooked, and and continued on from sixth form to to where I am today. Actually, I regard, my career as very much been focused on my passion. So it's been that's the story, really. Where did you go on to study after sixth form? I did my degree, at the University of Surrey. And, actually, even back then, I was really focused on thinking about industry as an opportunity. So I did a degree that offered me a year as a placement in industry, so I went and worked with Seneca before it was was AstraZeneca at the time. And then I went on to to do a PhD at the National Institute of Medical Research in London at Mill Hill. Sadly not there anymore. And then a postdoc and then came back. I did a postdoc in The US with Johns Hopkins Medical School, and then I came back to Europe and straight into industry and and been in industry ever since. You never had that, pull towards academia? You never wanted to move into that side of the the business? I I think not. I think I was always more interested in the translational aspects of of of what I've been doing. And I sort of moved from microbiology to genetics, into cancer biology, and I was really, you know, intrigued with where this might go from a translation perspective and starting to think about drug discovery and then ultimately on into drug development. Nate, you mentioned Zeneca, but you also worked at Zealand Pharma at Shire. You even worked in in venture capital as well. Tell me a little bit about that. Yes. I I I went into venture, after I'd spent some time at Shire. And while …

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