Cend Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biotech company, announced that it has acquired Impilo Therapeutics, Inc. The combination expands Cend’s drug delivery capabilities to create a unique platform for targeted tissue penetrating delivery of nucleic acid-based medicines to solid tumor cancers.
While antisense and siRNA medicines have reached market for a range of metabolic, neurological and neuro-muscular conditions, none have reached market for anticancer applications. “By combining Impilo with Cend our objective is to address delivery issues that have limited the ability of nucleic acid-based medicines to benefit cancer patients,” commented David Slack, CEO of Cend.
“Cend’s lead asset, CEND-1, has generated encouraging clinical data showing the ability to enhance delivery of standard-of-care chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer patients, and the Company has generated similarly encouraging preclinical results for a variety of therapeutic modalities,” commented Sangeeta Bhatia, MD, PhD, scientific co-founder of Impilo and Director of MIT’s Center for Cancer Nanomedicine.
“With the combination of Cend and Impilo technologies, we have demonstrated unique abilities to deliver antisense, siRNA, microRNA, and immunostimulatory oligonucleotides selectively to solid tumor cancers and certain immune cells,” commented Frank Slack, PhD, scientific co-founder of Impilo and Director of Harvard’s Initiative for RNA Medicine.
“The scientific founders of Cend and Impilo have collaborated for many years and generated significant publications,” commented Cend Executive Chairman, Erkki Ruoslahti. “Cend will continue to work closely with Impilo’s founders as part of our extended team.”
Via acquisition of Impilo’s assets, the CendR Platform combines Cend’s clinical-stage targeted tumor penetrating peptide, CEND-1, with additional targeting capabilities. It also brings nanoparticle technologies, including fusogenic nanoparticles that can deliver high payloads of nucleic acid-based drugs directly into the cytosol compartment of cells.
Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed. Accompanying the acquisition, Sangeeta Bhatia and Frank Slack will join Erkki Ruoslahti, MD, PhD; Tambet Teesalu, PhD; and Kazuki Sugahara, MD on Cend’s Scientific Advisory Board. Impilo scientific co-founder and Distinguished Professor at UC San Diego, Michael Sailor, PhD will join Cend’s Board of Directors.