Two medical start-up companies affiliated with UNMC will present their technologies at the first-ever University Start-Ups Demo Day in Washington, D.C. next week.
They’re among 35 selected from a field of 200 applicants who will present their technologies to representatives of pharmaceutical companies, venture capitalists and members of Congress.
One of the start-ups, Calidum, is a based on a radio-therapeutic pharmaceutical compound developed by UNMC radiation oncology researcher Dr. JaninaBaranowska-Kortylewicz.
Calidum Chairman of the Board, Dr. Sam Al-Muranni, describes the technology as a dual-targeted radio-therapeutic because it can both locate a cancer cell and destroy its DNA, thereby killing the cancer. He says with this dual-targeting it can use less radioactive material, resulting in less damage to normal tissue and fewer side effects for patients:
“The beauty about our technology is because it can get straight to the DNA of the cancer cell and stay there, it gets locked into the nucleus with the DNA, the radiotoxicity is very low, the pharmacological toxicity is very low, so you don’t get a lot of the secondary reactions that we all know happen with a cancer treatment. There’s no loss of hair, there’s no falling of the nails… there is a considerable advantage to the quality of life of the patient.”
Al-Muranni says funding will allow them to pursue the next step in their human trials, demonstrating the pharmaceutical’s ability to find and destroy cancer cells when simply injected into a patient’s bloodstream. He says they’ve already proven it can do so when injected into or near the cancer cells themselves.
The University Start-ups Demo Day takes place on September 20th. For more information, the website is UNMC.edu