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Brendan Lynch talks about MIT $100K
An MIT graduate student has co-founded a startup, Resonance Therapeutics, based on technologies that earned him the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for Inventions.
Geoffrey von Maltzahn, a researcher for the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology based at MIT, won the $30,000 prize for two technologies aimed at reducing the side effects of cancer treatment. Von Maltzahn developed a drug delivery system to targets tumors more efficiently with existing drugs, without affecting surrounding tissue. He also made advancements in using gold nanoscale rods to act as antenna to attract radiation treatments, sparing surrounding healthy tissue.
Von Maltzahn described the delivery system as a water balloon for drug molecules, covered with “zip codes.” The system would target tumors and alert its fellow drug-carriers to the tumor’s location once it got there. Von Maltzahn said 99 percent of cancer drugs miss their target, leading to side effects such as hair loss and fatigue in patients.
Von Maltzahn compared current drug delivery methods to setting a group of cell-phoneless tourists loose in Boston and asking them to find a bakery with purple cupcakes. Sticking with the metaphor, von Maltzahn’s treatment gives the tourists cell phones, making the task more efficient.
The gold nanorod antennas would be administered intraveneously before radiation treatment. Doctors would then perform infrared, rather than the standard ionized, radiation via a lamp or fiberoptic cable for cancers of the lung or colon. The nanorod antennas would attract the radiation, leaving healthy tissue mostly unaffected, von Maltzahn said.
The nanorod antenna technology should be ready for clinical trials within a few years, von Maltzahn said, while the drug delivery system could be ready for trials in about three to five years. Von Maltzahn has been working on the technology for about three years.
Resonance was co-founded last year by von Maltzahn, Shelly Coldiron, CEO of Salt Lake City, Utah-based Concurrent Analytical Inc., and Chris Shoen. MIT professor, Hepregen Corp. co-founder and 2009 Mass High Tech Woman to Watch Sangeeta Bhatia will serve as head of the scientific advisory board, von Maltzahn said. The company is based in Cambridge for now, though it doesn’t have dedicated office space yet.
The startup is looking for about $10 million in venture funding and is working with a team of MIT Sloan School of Management students on developing its business plan, von Maltzahn said. Resonance uses nanoparticles provided by another company von Maltzahn co-founded, Concurrent Analytical division Nanopartz, which provides gold nanoparticles to researchers.
The prize money provides invaluable flexibility for planning Resonance and other plans, even if it won’t cover a clinical trial, von Maltzahn said.
“It’s definitely enough to pay off the student loans I’ve acquired being in school so long,” he said.
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