Boston, April 04, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- (BOSTON, INSERT DATE) —The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Northpond Labs, the research-and-development affiliate of Northpond Ventures, entered into an agreement today, whereby Northpond Labs will support the Institute’s “Lab-on-a-Molecule” project. This is the third Wyss project to which Northpond Labs has provided funding and in-kind support to ensure a pathway toward rapid technology commercialization.
In 2020, the Wyss Institute, Northpond Labs and other collaborating institutions launched the Laboratory for Bioengineering Research and Innovation at the Wyss Institute as part of a research collaboration. The collaboration, entered into agreement by Harvard’s Office of Technology Development, established a $12 million, five-year commitment from Northpond Labs to advance impactful research with a strong translational potential for commercialization, which now also includes the Lab-on-a-Molecule project.
“We are developing a next-generation platform for compound screening that uses self-assembled nanodevices to accelerate the discovery process. With support from Northpond Labs we hope to find novel activators for multiple different conditions, including therapeutics such as allosteric regulators and molecular glues,” said Wyss Associate Faculty member Wesley Wong, Ph.D., who is an Associate Professor of Biological Chemistry & Molecular Pharmacology and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and an Investigator in Boston Children’s Hospital Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine.
The Lab-on-a-Molecule team, led by Wong, Clinton Hansen, Ph.D., and Mark Lipstein, is using DNA nanoswitch technology developed by the Wong lab. Harnessing this innovative technology, the researchers are developing an in vitro high-throughput platform which is able to identify compounds that not only bind target proteins with relevance to diseases but functionally affect their interactions with other proteins.
“While there are many tools for disrupting protein-protein interactions, there remains an unmet need to interrogate at scale, molecules that promote these interactions. Lab-on-a-Molecule is suited for this purpose, and we believe it can be applied across research and therapeutics development,” said Michael Rubin, M.D., Ph.D., CFA, Northpond’s Founder and CEO. “Working alongside our exceptional partners at the Wyss Institute, we will support the Lab-on-a-Molecule project’s research process and aim to accelerate commercialization, to positively impact patients' and families' lives.”
This project follows two earlier Wyss projects developed under The Laboratory for Bioengineering Research and Innovation. In 2022, the Institute, in partnership with Northpond Labs, spun out EnPlusOne Biosciences, an RNA solutions company which started as a controlled enzymatic RNA synthesis project funded by Northpond Labs in 2020. The second project, SomaCode, received funding in 2022. SomaCode aims to solve key challenges in targeting therapeutic cells to sites in the body affected by the disease and focuses on improving immune cell trafficking to solid tumors.
Because of its potential as a next-generation drug discovery technology, the Lab-on-a-Molecule project had already been selected by the Wyss Institute as one of its 2022 Validation Projects. As such, it will receive additional research and commercialization support from Northpond Labs and Boston Children’s Hospital.
“The Lab-on-a-Molecule project represents an entirely new approach to drug discovery. With this third major project emerging from the collaboration agreement between the Wyss Institute and Northpond Labs, and this time also including Boston Children’s Hospital, we are expanding our common interests into a new therapeutics area primed for innovation. Northpond Labs’ support will lend a strong hand to the team in helping to achieve their commercialization goals,” said Angelika Fretzen, Ph.D., M.B.A., the Wyss Institute’s Technology Translation Director & Chief Operating Officer.
PRESS CONTACT
Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
Benjamin Boettner, benjamin.boettner@wyss.harvard.edu, +1 617-432-8232
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The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
(http://wyss.harvard.edu) is a research and development engine for disruptive innovation powered by biologically-inspired engineering with visionary people at its heart. Our mission is to transform healthcare and the environment by developing ground-breaking technologies that emulate the way Nature builds and accelerate their translation into commercial products through the formation of startups and corporate partnerships to bring about positive near-term impact in the world. We accomplish this by breaking down the traditional silos of academia and barriers with industry, enabling our world-leading faculty to collaborate creatively across our focus areas of diagnostics, therapeutics, medtech, and sustainability. Our consortium partners encompass the leading academic institutions and hospitals in the Boston area and throughout the world, including Harvard’s Schools of Medicine, Engineering, Arts & Sciences, and Design, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University, Tufts University, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, University of Zürich, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Northpond Ventures is a multi-billion-dollar science-driven venture capital firm based in Cambridge, MA; San Francisco, CA; and Bethesda, MD. Northpond has consistently been named one of the most active lead life science investors in venture industry rankings. It is deeply engaged in the academic ecosystem, having founded The Laboratory for Bioengineering Research and Innovation at Harvard’s Wyss Institute; launched the MIT-Northpond Program - Advancing Life Science & Engineering Innovation; and sponsored a prize for women entrepreneurs at MIT. It has led or co-led over 60 financings over the past several years and sits on the board of the vast majority of these businesses. Learn more at npv.vc
About Harvard University’s Office of Technology Development
Harvard’s Office of Technology Development (OTD) promotes the public good by fostering innovation and translating new inventions made at Harvard University into useful products that are available and beneficial to society. Our integrated approach to technology development comprises sponsored research and corporate alliances, intellectual property management, and technology commercialization through venture creation and licensing. More than 90 startups have launched to commercialize Harvard technologies in the past 5 years, collectively raising more than $4.5 billion in financing. To further bridge the academic-industry development gap, Harvard OTD manages the Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator and the Harvard Grid accelerator. For more information, please visit https://otd.harvard.edu.
