Envisage-Wistar Partnership and Immunacel LLC
An early stage healthcare venture creation and management firm
Monday, June 8, 2015
Embassy Suites, Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania (directions)
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About
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Much has been said lately about how to improve the tech transfer situation. Wistar is meeting this challenge. Immunacel is the first of a series of developmental challenges and the Envisage-Wistar partnership solution becomes the meat of the evening's discussion.
Envisage LLC is an early stage healthcare venture creation and management firm. By focusing on key healthcare segments, Envisage aims to identify and advance promising healthcare innovations into value-add ventures.
IMMUNACCEL LLC is a Wistar Institute spin-out focused on accelerating the development of immune-mediated treatments for cancer and other unmet medical needs:
"We are launching as a service-based business targeting immunotherapy companies. We will be providing services to functionally validate existing pipeline candidates, identify new therapeutic candidates that can drive or inhibit activity of T-lymphocytes, and discover useful companion diagnostics to steer clinical development of said candidates. We operate with capital efficiency and leverage the existing Wistar infrastructure in driving value-add services."
Cancer immunotherapy has gained prominence over the last few years and as a result the industry has witnessed a rise in the number of pipeline candidates. The cancer immunotherapy market is projected to reach $35 billion by 2020 (Citigroup Report).
Life sciences companies are often faced with the challenge of finding the right model systems (in vitro and in vivo) to evaluate the mechanism and functionality of their drug candidates. In addition, given the changing oncology landscape, it is becoming increasingly important to efficiently, inexpensively and accurately identify the most promising therapeutic combinations. For young companies, the timeframe and expense required to set up innovative and reliable model systems in house can be exceedingly cost prohibitive.
IMMUNACCEL’s 3-D cancer-immune cell organotypic culture system is a physiologically relevant culture system utilizing primary human cancer cells and cytotoxic T cells (CTL) generated from patient T-cells, amongst fibroblasts and collagen assembled in a 3-D organotypic model. Their system was originally designed to understand the biology of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in the evaluation of biological therapeutics and small molecule inhibitors of chemokines and their receptors. Now, they are leveraging the power of the platform to exploit new targets on the immune-tumor interface and target the tumor microenvironment.
3 Major Issues
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- Is this model/relationship unique?
- Will this relationship address the Life Sciences Industry's need for more focus?
- Will this benefit the Philadelphia region?
Program:
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6:30 - Cocktails & Dinner (Cash bar and special 2-entree buffet menu)
8:00 - Vic Subbu, COO of Immunacel & Managing Partner of Envisage and Heather Steinman, VP of Business Development & Executive Director Tech Transfer Wistar Institute, will deliver the Company's "Elevator" Pitch to the Group
8:20 - Panel will address three major issues crucial to helping the Company reach the next level.
9:00 - Open discussion: members and guests
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Slides
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