7 Hills Pharma Launches With $2-Million SBIR Grant & $4 Million in Seed Capital

7 Hills Pharma recently announced it has been awarded a $2-million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) titled Development of a small molecule activator of integrin cell adhesion to enhance therapeutic responses to checkpoint blockade in cancer. This is the second NIH grant awarded to the company for the advancement of its integrin activator. The first grant supported the successful completion of the proof-of-concept study. The SBIR award is based on a competitive Federal grant program aimed at supporting scientific excellence and technological innovation. The NIH grant is in addition to $4 million in seed capital provided to 7 Hills from private investors.

“We are honored by the NCI’s support of our important work in making tough-to-treat non-immunogenic solid tumors, more susceptible to anti-tumor attacks by the immune system and check point inhibitors,” said Upendra Marathi, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of 7 Hills. “With this funding and the financial support from our angel investors, we plan to conduct key IND-enabling preclinical studies for our lead compound 7HP349 and related compounds for the treatment of drug-resistant tumors with defective T cell-tumor cell adhesion.”

“The fundamental problem in disease progression with cancer is that solid tumors evade the immune system by preventing the infiltration, function, and ultimate attack of T cells and other tumoricidal immune cells,” added Darren Woodside, PhD, Co-founder of 7 Hills and Chairman of the NIH Innovative Immunology Research Study Section. “It’s an adhesion problem. We have known that solid tumors create an immunosuppressive microenvironment that prevents killer T cells from adhering to the tumor blood vessel lining and working their way into the tumor to do their job. 7 Hills is optimizing novel integrin activators to address and reverse the inherent tumor protective environment, promoting T-cell destruction of the tumor while maintaining a favorable overall safety profile by leveraging the natural biological mechanism of integrins.”

7 Hills’ lead agent, 7HP349, is a next-generation integrin activator that has been shown in preclinical models to increase T cell adhesion by 100-fold while maintaining their ability to move and migrate. 7HP349 is a small molecule that promotes immune cell adhesion by turning on a switch that is typically dormant in tumoricidal cells in patients with non-immunogenic cancers. In doing so, 7HP349 is expected to increase trafficking, infiltration, and killing of cytolytic T cells to facilitate a productive immune response against a variety of solid tumors.

7 Hills Pharma is focused on the development of novel, cost efficient, and accessible immunomodulatory agents that leverage well-known integrin biology to drive and enhance essential steps in the immune cycle. The company’s lead programs are designed to improve the effectiveness of immuno-oncology therapies, including checkpoint inhibitors and cellular therapies, and cord blood transplantation in the treatment of cancers and genetic diseases.  For more information, visit www.7hillspharma.com.