A small biotech startup called Alpha-9 Theranostics has raised $75 million to design molecular homing missiles that deliver radioactive molecules into tumors. If that precision radiotherapy approach works, it could lead to potent treatments that kill cancer while minimizing damage to healthy parts of the body.
The new financing, announced Wednesday, will help it begin early clinical tests of its first five therapies over the next two years, chief executive Dr. David Hirsch said.
Much like radiation therapy used in some hospitals, where an ionizing beam is directed at a tumor, the startup’s drugs rely on radioactivity to damage cancer cells, Hirsch said. “But instead of shining something externally, you’re using a molecule to bring it to the tumor,” he said.
The company’s 15 employees are split between offices in Boston and research labs in Vancouver. The startup plans to potentially triple its headcount up to 45 employees by the end of 2023 and expects its current funding to support the firm well into 2025.
Two radiopharmaceutical treatments sold by Novartis — Lutathera, approved in 2018 for certain digestive tract cancers, and Pluvicto, approved earlier this year for prostate cancer — have helped ignite investor interest in radioactive cancer therapies. “It generated a lot of interest in the field,” Hirsch said.
According to the Globe’s tally, over the last three years, investors have poured more than $1 billion into private companies developing radiopharmaceuticals, including Massachusetts startups Aktis Oncology, Curie Therapeutics, and Ratio Therapeutics.
Alpha-9 opted to keep its research sites in Canada to be close to its founders Dr. François Bénard, Kuo-Shyan Lin, and David Perrin from the University of British Columbia and BC Cancer. But Hirsch also wanted to keep a foot in Boston for business development, finance, and clinical development.
The startup will first test its five experimental therapies in imaging studies that use a weaker radioactive molecule to monitor where the therapy goes in a patient’s body. “You can take a picture and ask if the drug is in the tumor. Because if it’s not in the tumor, it’s not going to work,” Hirsch said.
If the imaging experiments look promising, Alpha-9 will begin a second set of studies to determine how much of the drug gets into the tumor. Those studies will help the firm decide which drug should move forward into a traditional clinical trial to more thoroughly evaluate its safety and effectiveness.
Scientists at Alpha-9 attach the radioactive compounds to peptides — small molecules designed by chemists to hone in on particular cancer target. Different radioactive molecules are attached to the same cancer-targeting drug for the imaging, dosimetry, and treatment steps. Using the same molecule as both a therapeutic and diagnostic is a tactic called theranostics, which is reflected in the company’s name.
The front half of the startup’s name, Alpha-9, is a nod to the two kinds of radioactive molecules used in its therapies: alpha emitters, whose ionizing radiation damages DNA to kill cancer cells, and radioactive fluorine, whose atomic number is 9, which is used in the imaging portion of the company’s studies.
Ryan Cross can be reached at ryan.cross@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @RLCscienceboss.