Developing Novel Cancer Drugs On A Budget With Iterion Therapeutics' Rahul Aras, Ph.D.
Episode
48 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Relationships, Startups
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Capital-efficient drug development: Iterion reached human proof-of-concept in HCC and desmoid tumors using under $50 million in equity capital by supplementing with $26 million in CPRIT grants. Biotech founders outside major hubs should actively pursue state-level product development grants, which can fund $10–20 million per program and bridge early-stage financing gaps.
- ✓Indication selection as financial strategy: Choosing HCC as the lead indication was partly economic — roughly 50% of patients carry Wnt beta-catenin activating mutations, the clinical white space after first-line therapy is wide, and a second-line accelerated approval pathway requires a smaller registrational study, reducing capital requirements compared to large indications like colorectal cancer.
- ✓Downstream pathway targeting to avoid toxicity: Prior Wnt beta-catenin inhibitors failed due to GI toxicity and bone fractures from blocking the pathway upstream. Tegavivant binds TBLR1 specifically, shutting down only nuclear beta-catenin transcription while leaving cytoplasmic and membrane-bound pools intact, preserving normal cellular function and enabling tolerability in heavily pretreated solid tumor patients.
- ✓Clinical signal as partnership catalyst: Demonstrating monotherapy activity and tolerability in a complex tumor type before seeking pharma partnerships significantly increases leverage. Iterion secured an undisclosed large-pharma clinical collaboration for a TKI combination in HCC only after phase one data showed responses in patients who had exhausted all available therapies, validating the combination rationale.
- ✓Geographic cost offset through infrastructure programs: Operating in Houston rather than Boston reduces lab space costs meaningfully, with flexible incubator facilities like Portal Innovations providing high-end laboratory space at lower per-square-foot rates. Pairing this with CPRIT grant funding and remote senior hires allows small oncology companies to stretch equity capital further than equivalent Boston-based operations.
What It Covers
Rahul Aras, PhD, CEO of Iterion Therapeutics, details how the company advanced its lead cancer drug tegavivant through clinical trials in hepatocellular carcinoma and other tumor types for under $50 million in equity capital, using grant funding, focused indication selection, and strategic academic partnerships.
Key Questions Answered
- •Capital-efficient drug development: Iterion reached human proof-of-concept in HCC and desmoid tumors using under $50 million in equity capital by supplementing with $26 million in CPRIT grants. Biotech founders outside major hubs should actively pursue state-level product development grants, which can fund $10–20 million per program and bridge early-stage financing gaps.
- •Indication selection as financial strategy: Choosing HCC as the lead indication was partly economic — roughly 50% of patients carry Wnt beta-catenin activating mutations, the clinical white space after first-line therapy is wide, and a second-line accelerated approval pathway requires a smaller registrational study, reducing capital requirements compared to large indications like colorectal cancer.
- •Downstream pathway targeting to avoid toxicity: Prior Wnt beta-catenin inhibitors failed due to GI toxicity and bone fractures from blocking the pathway upstream. Tegavivant binds TBLR1 specifically, shutting down only nuclear beta-catenin transcription while leaving cytoplasmic and membrane-bound pools intact, preserving normal cellular function and enabling tolerability in heavily pretreated solid tumor patients.
- •Clinical signal as partnership catalyst: Demonstrating monotherapy activity and tolerability in a complex tumor type before seeking pharma partnerships significantly increases leverage. Iterion secured an undisclosed large-pharma clinical collaboration for a TKI combination in HCC only after phase one data showed responses in patients who had exhausted all available therapies, validating the combination rationale.
- •Geographic cost offset through infrastructure programs: Operating in Houston rather than Boston reduces lab space costs meaningfully, with flexible incubator facilities like Portal Innovations providing high-end laboratory space at lower per-square-foot rates. Pairing this with CPRIT grant funding and remote senior hires allows small oncology companies to stretch equity capital further than equivalent Boston-based operations.
Notable Moment
When Iterion opened enrollment cohorts mid-study, slots filled within 48 hours because oncologists — who previously had no reason to genotype HCC patients for Wnt mutations — began proactively prescreening and calling the company directly, signaling a shift in clinical practice driven by early trial data.
Episode Transcript
Welcome back to the business of biotech. I'm your host, Ben Comer, chief editor at Life Science Leader. And today, I'm speaking with Rahul Aras, PhD, president and CEO at Iterion Therapeutics, a clinical stage company developing cancer therapeutics targeting the Wntbeta catenin pathway, a known signaling target in oncology, but one that has confounded drug development efforts for decades. Rahul is a scientist by training and has previous experience building and leading a venture backed drug company and doing it in a very capital efficient way. Iterion two is progressing its lead candidate through smaller overall investments amount of investment amounts, a topic that we'll dig into during this episode. We'll also talk about ITerion's partnership strategy, the combination potential for its lead drug candidate, and what the challenges and opportunities are for launching and growing a therapeutics company outside of the big biotech hubs like Boston or San Francisco. Rahul, thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much, Ben. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. Me too. I I wanted to start off with your background. I mentioned in the introduction that you were a scientist by training. You got your PhD in biomedical research from NYU. What did you do next? Where'd you go from there? Yeah. No. I appreciate it. So, yeah, PhD from NYU. We studied microbial pathogenesis and its relationship to gastric cancer. Moved from science bench quickly into the business development realm. Went to Cold Spring Harbor lab, where we, I was at a very exciting time there when there was a lot of RNAi research that was just coming out. Actually, Alnylam was being founded and, you know, shRNA was being looked at as a novel modality with a lot of the IP having been generated from some of the labs at Cold Spring Harbor Lab. So that gave me some exposure doing BD deals and engaging in these startup discussions that I found quite interesting. Went from there to the cleaning clinic, worked in the innovations group and that's where I started my first company. So, out of Cleveland Clinic, co founded a company called Juventis Therapeutics. It was in the cardiovascular regenerative medicine space, developing novel gene therapies to really help in the areas of heart failure and, first of all, heart rate disease. And that's what got me started. So, you know, that company started with a Lancet paper, quite frankly, very much a concept. And we took that all the way from concept through phase two clinical studies, and it really, you know, gave me the bug to work in this startup early stage venture backed private company setting that I liked so much. Yeah. Well, I wanna back up just a little bit. You must have gotten a bug before that because after what I'm sure was a fairly difficult, PhD program at NYU, you you jumped straight into business development. How did you or or I guess, what made you decide that you wanted …
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“Operating in Houston rather than Boston reduces lab space costs meaningfully, with flexible incubator facilities like Portal Innovations providing high-end laboratory space at lower per-square-foot rates.”
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“The company advanced its lead cancer drug tegavivant through clinical trials in hepatocellular carcinoma and other tumor types for under $50 million in equity capital.”
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