Founder & CEO John Mulligan Shares Good Therapeutics' Journey and Vision for 2022
We founded Good Therapeutics to create a new kind of context-dependent drug
The animal data came from our lead program, a PD-1 regulated IL-2. IL-2 is a cytokine that potently stimulates the immune system. It was first approved as a cancer drug in 1990, but it is so toxic that it has never been widely used. Our lead candidate combines IL-2 and an anti-PD-1 checkpoint antibody with our conditional mechanism so that the IL-2 is active only when the antibody domain is bound to PD-1. It is designed to target IL-2 activity to tumor-killing T cells that express PD-1 while sparing the rest of the immune system. In work led by Justin Killebrew, our Senior Director of Immuno-oncology, our mouse tumor models showed that it is highly effective at destroying tumors and stimulating PD-1 positive T cells, but that it is inactive on PD-1 negative NK cells and T cells that would otherwise respond to unregulated IL-2.
In early 2021, with positive proof-of-concept data for our technology and our first therapeutic program underway, Good Therapeutics began to add the capabilities needed to take our drugs into the clinic. We grew our staff from 12 scientists to a team of 22. Because partnering is a key element of our business strategy, we recruited Neela Patel as Chief Business Development Officer. She built on our initial contacts to generate substantial traction in discussions with potential partners for the PD1-IL2 program and for a number of earlier stage projects. We also hired David Bienvenue as Senior Director of Protein Sciences. David is responsible for shepherding the development of our research proteins into clinical candidates. The team that David is building has allowed us to shift from outsourcing protein expression to producing and characterizing our own proteins in house. With this growth, we needed more space, so we moved from the Icogenex incubator into a sublet from IDRI in an Alexandria Real Estate building near Seattle’s biotech core in South Lake Union.
Our evolution as a company will continue during 2022. We plan to choose a clinical candidate from our PD1-IL2 program in Q2 and to finish recruiting the in-house preclinical development team that will manage the outsourced CMC and other functions needed to take this molecule into the clinic. We will also advance our programs focused on IL-12, IFNα, and TGFβ with the goal of generating in vivo proof-of-principle data for at least one more program in 2022. In addition, we will continue to expand our basic science and protein sciences groups and to put in place the other business functions we need to grow. Ultimately, we plan to expand the Good Therapeutics’ team to 30 or 35 people over the course of the year. As always, we will aim to provide a safe, supportive and family-friendly working environment where we can combine fun with cutting edge science.
We expect to sign a partnership deal
Good Therapeutics has had a great ride since we launched. None of this would have been possible without the dedication and focus of our whole team
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2yJohn, I love what you are doing. It would be great to connect.
Senior Research Associate at ElitechGroup
2yCongrats and great progress
CEO, co-founder at Meliora Therapeutics
2yCongrats on all the progress John! I remember the early days of Good and supporting your informatics needs back then well :) kudos on the milestones you have achieved since then and excited to see the good you will do for patients!