Vacancy expired!
We seek a technically proficient, entrepreneurial-minded partner, 5-15 hours per week, to take this technology to commercialization. If you have experience with fundraising and drug development, please read on!
About The Team and The Technology
Dr. Karim Essani is the head of virology at Western Michigan University. He is a well-known leader in the field of virology and has received numerous NIH research awards over his career. Over the past several years, Dr. Essani's team has developed an oncolytic virotherapy ("OV") based on the tanapox virus. OVs are presently a hot topic in oncology therapeutics, and several U.S. startups have been founded in the past few years on their respective platform engineered viruses. Moreover, there are currently about 40-50 ongoing clinical trials involving OVs. Our team's oncolytic tanapox virus ("OTPV") shows great promise for a variety of reasons, as evidenced by top level conversations with other leaders in this field and by our attending the major industry conferences.
Grants and Funding
Following many years of successive NIH federal grants, WMU's oncolytic tanapox virus ("OTPV") project has recently received internal commercialization funds, as well as a matching "KICKSTART" grant from the State of Michigan. The KICKSTART program includes a biotech commercialization grant administered by the University of Michigan Medical School, and it also provides substantial support including market intelligence, regulatory guidance, and connections to various potential funding sources.
Building on this success, our team next seeks to raise approximately $100,000 in donations to match with a later-stage State of Michigan "M-TRAC" program. Thereafter, we plan to raise an additional $2M-$3M funding in the form of a research hospital partnership and/or venture investment to complete the preclinical safety tests and other due diligence to support a pre-IND filing. After that, we seek to attract an appropriate investment or partnership that will support a full program of clinical trials, likely in the $50M range.
About the Role
Professor Essani and his team are seeking a technically proficient, entrepreneurial-minded partner to take this technology to commercialization. As with most pharma development, it will be critical for this person to have deep experience in drug development from inception to completed clinical trials. Fundraising expertise is also necessary, including a history of partnering with research hospitals, venture capitalists, and big pharma.
This individual would initially have to spend 5-15 hours/week, partly at Western Michigan University (WMU), unpaid at this time. A stipend or small salary may be possible, contingent on acceptance into the various grant-based programs that will hopefully be achieved.
This individual will have the following duties:
Business Pitch, fundraising, collaborations
Identify vendors and manage preclinical safety studies
Identify vendors and manage regulatory compliance process
Supply chain, quality control, cost and pricing analysis
Customer Discovery
Market research
Commercialization Grant writing
About You
Skills/experiences of the person we seek include:
Virotherapy, immuno-oncology, and/or vaccine research and commercialization
Preparation and administration of clinical trials
Collaboration with research hospitals
Pharma business development
Experience in a startup environment
Startup fundraising, pitch decks
NIH/NSF, SBIR/STTR grants
Customer Discovery
In addition, this person must accept and be tolerant to high levels of ambiguity and uncertainty since our ability to raise new money is unknown at this time, and the certainly of raising new money is dependent on the success of technology development.
Compensation: A stipend or small salary may be possible, contingent on acceptance into the various grant-based programs that will hopefully be achieved.
Vacancy expired!