Welcome to Talking Precision Medicine (TPM podcast) — the podcast in which we discuss the future of healthcare and health technology, and how advances in data and data science are fueling the next industrial revolution. 

In this episode I chat with Dr Sarah Hein, co-founder and CEO of March Biosciences, a Houston Based biotech developing cell therapies for T-cell malignancies. Sarah is an old friend and colleague from our days as trainees at Baylor College of Medicine, where we both circulated among those with ambitions of entrepreneurship. Sarah has definitely made good in that regard, as a serial entrepreneur deeply enmeshed in Houston’s growing life sciences and healthtech ecosystem. 

Come on in and have a listen.

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Episode highlights:

 

March Biosciences and their Mission

  • Dr. Sarah Hein is co-founder and CEO of March Biosciences, a Houston-based biotech company at the forefront of developing cell therapies for T-cell lymphoma and leukemia 
  • T-cell lymphoma is a rare cancer accounting for ~ 15 % of all non-Hodgkin lymphomas, facing a very poor prognosis and low survival rate
  • The March Bio team is currently advancing to a Phase 2 clinical trial, based on the promising results observed  in the phase 1 study still ongoing at Baylor College of Medicine. Additionally, the company  plans to broaden its research to include more oncological indications and T-cell-driven autoimmune diseases

“For T-cell malignancies, what you generally see in the US is about 8,000-10,000 new cases per year. This is certainly a far cry from the numbers seen for B-cell malignancies, however, the need for these patients is critical. Unfortunately, the majority will become relapsed or refractory to standard of care. There are not a tremendous number of options left for them; there’s only a handful of therapies available, but durability and efficacy are relatively poor. Consequently, survival drops to less than 20% within three years for these patients. So that really defines the need.”

Cell Therapy

“A lot of times when we’ve thought about drugs in the past, we were thinking about a small molecule or even an antibody. You have a drug that hits a very specific target, and then you see some sort of effect. Now we are able to use a patient’s own cellsT as living drugs. These cells are boosted by biological  engineering and  function like normal cells with enhanced capabilities. This breakthrough has significantly improved patient care by offering new treatment possibilities.”

  • Cell therapies, particularly CAR T-cell therapy, are revolutionizing the treatment of various diseases, including genetic and chronic conditions, with the most significant early impacts observed in oncology.
  • Autologous cell therapies use a patient’s own cells, while allogeneic cell therapies use donor cells. The innovative in vivo cell therapy modifies cells directly within the patient’s body.

“I think what’s really exciting, what’s been transformational for the cell therapies is that within the last decade, we now have drugs that can lead  to durability, some might be so bold as to say curative remissions of certain cancers. And that has just not been true [previously]. Cancer historically has always been a disease that we think of as a management sort of disease, historically we’ve not been able to cure it.”

Challenges in Treating Hematological Cancers

“Our cell therapy is for hematological cancer, but it’s been a really challenging cancer to target because it involves using good T-cells to kill your bad, cancerous T-cells, presenting significant engineering challenges. Additionally, there have historically been some safety effects from off-tumor, on-target effects against your normal T-cells [with other approaches].”

  • Research into solid tumors using tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy, which boosts cells already fighting the tumor, is showing promising results.
  • It’s an exciting time as researchers optimize immunotherapies, tailoring treatments to specific cancers based on how they evade the immune system.

“Cell engineering requires a lot deeper understanding of the biology and how this sort of multi-factorial computer we live with can interact with itself to downregulate [on cancer targets].  In our case, we self-eliminate the target on our good cells and not on our bad cells. Interesting thing about that is we can also apply those same engineering principles to the way we manufacture our products. So we create a much more streamlined product, more potent by preserving the natural cell qualities.”

Vision for the Future 

“I’m not going to promise to cure all cancers, but I think, as a base case, we can cure one cancer, right? That’s an achievable goal and it still feels pretty lofty from where I’m sitting. So we’re going to go after this one indication. Lofty as it might seem, I believe we have the ability to create a new therapeutic class to target kinds of diseases that haven’t been reachable before with all these T-cell indications, helping to realign the immune system back to where it should be . It’s an exciting time to be here.”

 

This has been Talking Precision Medicine. Please subscribe and share our podcast with your colleagues, leave a comment or review, and stay tuned for the next episode. Until then you can explore our TPM podcast archive and listen to interesting guests from our past conversations.

 

 

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