Pasadena-based pharmaceutical company Lixte Biotechnology Holdings Inc.’s new chief executive is also charting a new course for the company and its cancer treatment drug.
Bas van der Baan, a veteran biotech executive, took over as chief executive last fall as the company founder and longtime chief executive, John Kovach, retired and then passed away at age 87. Baan has taken the helm as the company is embarking on clinical trials of its main drug candidate.
But Lixte’s drug is not designed to be administered as a standalone treatment against cancer; rather, the aim is to have it work in tandem with more established chemotherapy and immunotherapy regimens.
It’s an unusual course for the nearly 20-year-old company. Most biotech companies – including Lixte itself for its first 15 years – have developed drugs that act on a standalone basis to treat cancers or other diseases.
“We have pivoted from a monotherapy approach to helping other therapies – namely immunotherapy and chemotherapy – to kill cancer cells,” Baan said.
But that’s not Lixte’s only unusual feature. Unlike most biotech companies, Lixte doesn’t have in-house research and development staff. Instead, the company farms that basic work out, along with just about everything else. The only full-time employees are four executives who oversee all the outsourced work.
This of course minimizes overhead, but it also makes the company dependent on the research goals of others.
As a result, while Lixte’s technical global headquarters is in Pasadena, the research and clinical trial work have been dispersed around the globe. Baan’s home base is at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, where much of the research work is taking place. Other work for Lixte – including clinical trials – is being done at the University of Texas’ MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
City of Hope roots
Lixte Biotechnology began in 2005 as the late Kovach, then a researcher at Duarte-based City…
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