Westwood-based cancer immunotherapy company Nammi Therapeutics Inc., which is one of many startups racing to develop immune response treatments for cancer, has received a pair of recent awards that it hopes will enable it to stand out as it prepares to file a new drug application.
The first is a $4 million grant award from South San Francisco-based California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, also known as the California Stem Cell Agency. The grant, which was approved on Dec. 15 but has yet to be announced publicly, will help cover the final stage of preclinical trial costs.
The second award was announced last month jointly by Thousand Oaks-based Amgen Inc. and Torrance-based incubator BioLabs LA at the Lundquist Institute. This award, dubbed the “Amgen Golden Ticket,” gives Nammi one year’s free rent at BioLabs as well connections to Amgen’s scientific and business leaders.
“While both awards have material benefits, the bigger impact is that they validate the technology we’ve been developing,” said David Stover, Nammi’s chief executive.
That technology targets immunotherapy to the specific cancer tumor site, as opposed to boosting the overall body’s immune response. The goal is to deliver the highest possible immunotherapy dose with the least amount of harmful side effects.
The technology would first be aimed at cancerous tumors whose locations are too difficult for conventional surgical removal, such as certain brain tumors. Ultimately, Stover said, the immunotherapy could replace surgery altogether, but that is still years – if not decades – off.
Parallel tracks
Nammi’s technology grew out of a two-track development process. The first dates back to the company’s founding in 2018. Stover, a cancer therapy developer who had spent several years at Santa Monica biologics company Agensys helping to develop a monoclonal antibody treatment for cancer, had recently found himself out of a job as Agensys’s parent, Tokyo-based Astellas…
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