Lynnet Koh, Targazyme Founder and CEO: “Our Mission is to develop novel off-the shelf t-cell therapy products that harness the metastatic cancer patients’ own T-cells to successfully obliterate cancer, as a potential alternative to chemotherapy, radiation or radical surgery”

Presently, cancer is a growing concern. People of all age groups suffer from the ill –effects of cancer. It is a disease that not only affects individuals but also holds power to destroy families due to the financial and emotional turmoil brought by it. Ongoing research to find a cure for cancer has made interesting headways. One such research that has shown promising results is the efficacy of T-cell therapies. Globally there are various biotechnology companies developing excellent therapies for cancer treatment, but Targazyme stands out from the rest.

TargaZyme is a clinical-stage biotechnology company based in San Diego, CA, and focused on the research and development of disruptive, patented and novel, off-the-shelf T-Cell products. Its TZ 102 Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocyte (TIL) Therapies have the potential to address compelling unmet medical needs in cancer. Specifically enabling cancer patients with solid cancer tumors to be successfully treated with the power of their own immune system.

In conversation with Lynnet Koh, Founder and CEO of Targazyme

Q. Could you elaborate on TZ 102 TIL treatment and how it is a game–changer in cancer treatment?

Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocyte or TIL therapy is a type of adoptive cell therapy (ACT) that is growing rapidly. One example of ACT is CAR-T or chimeric antigen receptor-T cell therapy. ACTs are both an old and new approach to the immunotherapy of cancer. Old in the sense that it was first reported as LAK or lymphokine-activated killer cells by Steven Rosenberg’s group at the NIH back in the 1980s but has since become a modality or mode of therapy that is being intensely investigated by both academic sites and biopharma companies, for a good reason – its promise.

In TIL therapy, TILs are isolated from the tumor site biopsy or surgery, stimulated and expanded outside the body (ex vivo), and then re-infused back into the patient. TIL therapy can potentially provide durable responses, even cures, and is poised to revolutionize treatment options for patients. But – and it’s a big but - despite the promise of TIL therapy, we and others believe its success in treating patients with solid tumors – breast, lung, prostate, pancreatic, etc., is severely limited by an inadequate ability of TILs to home to tumors, infiltrate them and commence the business of killing tumor cells.

TargaZyme has created a breakthrough approach in TIL immunotherapy, which has the potential to better harness the power of a patient’s own immune system to destroy cancer by enhancing TILs with our breakthrough platform TZ102 fucosylation platform technology. TZ 102 has been shown to not only increase the ability of T cells to home effectively to tumors by 300-700 percent, but it also boosts their cancer tumor killing abilities as well. When clinically validated, we expect our exciting adoptive immunotherapies to hopefully eliminate the use of various toxic cancer therapies, radiation, and radical surgery that make up the current standard of care. And hopefully, enable cancer patients with solid tumors to be successfully cured with their own immune cells!

The class of our products has already been proven in our Phase 2 clinical trials at MD Anderson Cancer Center: A single dose of fucosylated immune cell therapy (HSCT) was shown to improve survival of terminally ill cancer patients from 64% post-100 days of transplant to 78% post-100 days of transplant. This improvement in patient outcomes was enabled by TZ 101’s impact on reducing the incidence of various morbidities associated with the potentially curative treatment, such as reduced incidence of life-threatening infections, reduced incidence of GVHD, engraftment failure, etcetera.

Q. What are the steps employed to protect the findings of Targazyme in the field of cellular therapy?

The company has 37+ patents with 35 patent pending applications worldwide, strong freedom to operate multiple FDA orphan drug designations provides seven years of market exclusivity from the date of FDA product approval. FDA BLA designations provide 12 additional years of protection from generic drugs from the date of product approval. Additionally, the company is submitting new patents to protect our approach to immunotherapies.

Q. What would you say are the top three skills needed to be a successful leader?

Developing a compelling common vision that can rally/sustain a team both inside the company and outside collaborators at leading cancer centers to accomplish that vision over an extended period of time, being able to lead a brilliant team of highly educated, brilliant, talented, strong-willed MDs and PhDs to achieve what many would regard as mission impossible goals/objectives, staying humble and hungry.

Q. Can you tell us in brief about the future plans of Targazyme?

We will be raising/allocating significant resources to clinical grade manufacturing, advancing into Registration Trials with TZ101, and advancing into the clinic with TZ102 Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocyte Therapies for the treatment of cancer patients with solid cancer tumors. We want to seek product approval from FDA and other regulators to begin selling our first product, TZ101, and we want to achieve clinical validation for our second product, TZ102 Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes therapies.

We hope to demonstrate in clinical trials that our clinical drug candidates can help enable the potentially curative treatment of stem cell transplantation to become much safer and to work more effectively, for treating terminally ill patients with blood cancers, blood disorders and autoimmune diseases. With TZ 102 Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocyte therapies, we hope to usher in the next frontier of cancer medicine, one where our drug candidates can harness the patient’s own immune system to hopefully help obliterate the cancer tumors as an alternative to the poison that is chemotherapy/radiation, the radical surgery that may leave patients permanently disfigured or the cancer drugs that may extend life by a few months but with significant life-long side effects.

To ensure our platform technology also helps patients with other diseases such as auto-immune diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and regenerative medicine, we aim to pursue out-licensing deals with other bio-pharmaceutical companies with commercialization capabilities. This strategy will also help us build a licensing revenue-generating business to hopefully provide our shareholders multiple shots on goal with shareholder value creation.

Meet the leader behind the success of Targazyme

Lynnet Koh, Founder and CEO of Targazyme has been described as a product visionary, an innovator, a chief product officer, a mission-driven high-integrity company builder– driven by a commitment to develop best-in-class medicine to making a life-changing difference for cancer patients and their families, to help employees/consultants grow to their very best selves and to build a great company that is built to last. Qualities include an ability to make things happen, being intellectually honest and authentic with a strong curiosity and a desire for continuous improvement. Operates with frugality, agility, tenacity, creativity – an out-of-the-box thinker with a revolutionary mindset yet pragmatic, highly practical and street-smart. Big on doing it right the first time & effective execution with a strong sense of urgency to achieve goals/objectives.

“Despite all the naysayers who said our mission was impossible to achieve, we successfully grew Targazyme from idea stage to demonstrating improved cancer patient outcomes at MD Anderson Cancer Center Phase 2 clinical trials, to receiving an FDA phase 3 Special Protocol Assessment Designation which provides a clear pathway towards first approval to the development of a product portfolio with multiple products each with the potential to successfully treat different cancers and auto-immune diseases.”