Kopra Bio reposted this
Kopra Bio (YC S24) makes stealthy viruses that teach your immune system to kill cancer. Founded by Andrew Bartynski and Alexander Haddad, a repeat YC-backed founder and a UCSF Neurosurgeon, Kopra is making the next Keytruda, a $25B/yr cancer drug blockbuster. They're starting with the most aggressive form of brain cancer, glioblastoma 🧠. In preclinical models, their treatment improves survival from 0 to 90%. State-of-the-art cancer therapies target tumor mutations one by one. Despite more than 550 cancer drug approvals since the year 2000, there are still 10 million cancer deaths each year. This approach is expensive ($1B per therapy), slow (10 years of development per drug), and incremental (only one mutation addressed per therapy). Even the most successful cancer drugs of all time have success rates of less than 10% in solid tumors. Kopra Bio infects cancer cells using stealthy viruses that spread throughout tumors and hijacks them to produce immune signals. The immune signals recruit T cells which then kill the cancer. This process teaches the patient’s immune system to kill their tumor - in vivo - curing their cancer and eliminating metastasis and recurrence. They have demonstrated efficacy in the most challenging brain cancer models increasing survival from 0% without treatment to greater than 90% with their treatment. If you’re as excited about eradicating cancer and would like to learn more, reach out to founders@kopra.bio. Congrats on the launch, Andrew and Alexander! 🚀 https://lnkd.in/gvb3UZsj