Rice University

Expert in health care investment banking joins group advising the Houston-based accelerator HOUSTON, Oct. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Rice University today announced the addition of Kevin Sheridan to its external advisory board for the Rice Biotech Launch Pad, a Houston-based accelerator focused on expediting the translation of the university's health and medical technology discoveries into cures. Sheridan will be instrumental in providing his counsel in financial expertise to expand the capabilities of the Launch Pad and progress its mission to identify and support highly differentiated projects of the accelerator and drive the growth of Houston as a world-class medical innovation ecosystem. He has over 25 years of experience in the investment banking industry. "With the formation of the external advisory board earlier this month, the Rice Biotech Launch Pad is well-positioned to stand out among other accelerators and to have a meaningful impact on the biotech industry with the invaluable insights provided by the board," said Omid Veiseh, associate professor of bioengineering at Rice and faculty director of the accelerator. "The addition of Kevin reflects our commitment to advancing innovation and achieving the highest standards of excellence. His valuable business acumen greatly enhances our ability to facilitate the successful transition of our faculty's research at Rice into thriving startups." "Our vision for the Rice Biotech Launch Pad is to connect Houston-based researchers with executives across a range of industries," said Paul Wotton, the accelerator's executive director and chairman. "Kevin is the next piece of the puzzle to building out the phenomenal group of executives that comprise our external advisory board. Kevin's background and expertise in advising pharma and biotech companies sets up the accelerator for continued progress in line with our business strategy to expand and advance the university's technologies into therapies and potential cures." Sheridan is the managing director and joint global head of health care investment banking at Jefferies, where he is responsible for 130 health care investment bankers globally while overseeing mergers and acquisitions and advising large-cap pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the United States, Europe and Japan. Prior to his current position, he was a managing director at UBS. Over the course of his career, Sheridan has led over 200 biotech equity transactions, including initial public offerings and follow-on offerings. He also serves as a board member of ApiJect Systems. He received a bachelor of arts degree from Rutgers University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Sheridan is the 12th member of the Launch Pad's external advisory board. The other members are Jason Bock, founder and CEO of CTMC; Albert Cha, managing partner of Frazier Life Sciences; Rima Chakrabarti, partner at KdT Ventures and adjunct professor of neuroscience at the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine; John Flavin, founder and CEO of Portal Innovations, co-founder and chairman of Pyxis Oncology and entrepreneurial advisor of Argonne National Laboratory; Pierre Jacquet, managing director and vice chairman of L.E.K.'s health care consulting practice; Robert Langer, professor at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrated Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dennis Lee, senior program officer of chemistry, manufacturing and controls at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Ferran Prat, senior vice president of research administration and industry relations at the MD Anderson Cancer Center; Josh Richardson, managing director and senior investor on the life sciences investigating team at Goldman Sachs; David Schull, president of Russo Partners; and Lisa Wright, president and CEO of Community Health Choice. About the Rice Biotech Launch Pad The Rice Biotech Launch Pad is a Houston-based accelerator focused on expediting the translation of Rice University's health and medical technology discoveries into cures. This initiative is designed to help advance internally discovered platform technologies from concept to clinical studies and commercialization. The Rice Biotech Launch Pad will identify and support highly differentiated projects while driving the expansion of Houston as a world-class medical innovation ecosystem. The accelerator will bring together local researchers with a network of industry executives. For more information, please visit . About Rice University Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,552 undergraduates and 3,998 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 4 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. Media Contacts: Jeff Falk 713-348-6775 [email protected] Andrew Bell 713-348-6770 [email protected] SOURCE Rice University

Co-founder and CEO Jacob Robinson explains how Motif designed the neurostimulation system to treat depression like a pacemaker for the brain. Motif Neurotech’s small device took a large step forward in September when the device startup announced it completed the first-in-human implant of its millimeter-scale brain stimulator . The milestone came more than a decade after Motif co-founder and CEO Jacob Robinson took a faculty position in the electrical engineering department at Rice University in 2012. There, the goal was to create neurotechnologies that were smaller, less invasive and more capable. Since then, he’s worked to figure out new platforms and new architectures for therapeutic neurotechnologies. In 2022, he launched Motif Neurotech with neurosurgeon and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sameer Sheth, minimally invasive interventional neurologist Dr. Sunil Sheth and miniaturization expert Kaiyuan Yang, who leads Rice University’s Secure and Intelligent Micro-Systems Lab. This year, Motif hired Medtronic Neuromodulation veteran Steven Goetz as chief technology officer. The Houston-based medtech startup has developed a miniature device to precisely stimulate the brain, saying it restores healthy circuit activity to treat mental health disorders at home following a 20-minute outpatient procedure for implantation. The company designed its Digitally programmable Over-brain Therapeutic (DOT) implant to treat treatment-resistant depression (TRD, a form of major depressive disorder) with minimal side effects compared to drugs. Robinson sees a path to make neuromodulation therapy for mental health as common as pacemakers in cardiology, he said in an interview with Medical Design & Outsourcing “I think there’s a future in which the electronic therapies that you provide adapt to your own needs and get better over time,” Robinson said. “They get better as they learn the pattern of stimulation that works best for you. They get better as we get more data across more individuals and develop better ways to classify brain activity as signals that help us improve the therapy. “The vision for the world that I like to imagine is where implants that you get for mental health get better over time and better as more people begin to use those devices,” he continued. “I think that part is really exciting.” The challenge of creating the device Robinson and the Motif team set out to stimulate the brain in a way that helped people with treatment-resistant psychiatric conditions like depression. Over the past 15 years, the neurological community has learned that stimulating the prefrontal cortex can help TRD patients get better. This method of stimulation — transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) — uses a large machine to create a giant magnetic field. Brainsway, Neuronetics and other device developers have made inroads in this space. To verify that noninvasive stimulation actually stimulates the brain, practitioners first stimulate the motor cortex until the patient begins to move their finger. By proving stimulation of the motor threshold, they can then move to the prefrontal cortex and treat psychiatric conditions. “The question we asked is, how are we building this tiny implant — about the size of a pea — and it’s supposed to replace this room-sized magnet?” Robinson said. “How do I know that it’s actually stimulating the brain in the same way?” Motif recognized that it could go to the motor cortex, like TMS. Working with neurosurgeons at Baylor College of Medicine, the team was able to test the device’s stimulation capabilities on a patient having a tumor resected. They placed the device on the motor cortex above the dura, so that it would not be in direct contact with the brain. Robinson said surgeons used a wand to communicate with the implant, delivering energy and enabling wireless control of the tiny device. “They pushed go and applied stimulation and that’s when we began to see finger movements,” Robinson said. “That was our ‘aha’ moment.” Developing the miniature Motif DOT implant The Motif DOT device measures 9 mm across, working with much less energy than a room-sized magnet to create stimulation in the way TMS does. “What that did was that really unlocked the ability to make miniature devices and have a new way of delivering energy that will allow us to make devices smaller than anybody else can make, but still have enough power to create therapeutic neuromodulation,” Robinson said. When Robinson began work on this technology, he and his team looked at solving the challenge of wireless power transfer. To make the device as small as possible, they aimed to find a way to energize implants without batteries. “The challenge is that, as you make content that is really small, the efficiencies also tend to get really small,” Robinson explained. “The amount of power that it can deliver gets really small. So, we took a different approach. Rather than using an antenna, like a magnetic coil for magnetic induction or an antenna that you would use to capture energy from electromagnetic waves, we created a material.” That material, he said, vibrates in the presence of a magnetic field, with the vibrational energy converting into electrical energy. After breaking through on the wireless power transfer, the team had to find a way to get its miniaturized device close to the brain tissue. Placing the small device within a burr hole in the skull without touching the brain makes it safer, faster and easier procedure than open-brain surgery. And it gets the Motif implant close enough to the target tissue that it eliminates the need for a lot of energy, Robinson said. “We combined those two things to make tiny electronics, tiny energy sources and the whole thing can be really small,” Robinson said. “That allows us to get close to the brain and deliver the energy that’s required to stimulate brain activity in a way that requires a lot of energy if you’re really far away.” The Motif Neurotech DOT as a “brain pacemaker” Motif’s leadless, battery-less DOT implant receives data and power from another device worn like a baseball cap. This werable part of the system can record data such as usage and potentially respond to individual patient needs or the activity of the brain itself. Robinson said these closed-loop, patient-specific features break up the traditional medical device architecture of having an implant — and only an implant — for an extended period of time. The system can also potentially expand to other sites for stimulation and recording. Robinson said research shows potentially better outcomes with stimulation on both sides of the brain (bilaterally). Over time, he could see adding a second, third or fourth device. He compared the technology to cardiac pacemakers, where “people have three leads put in, but they have to route those wires all over the place.” “We can add additional leads” with Motif’s technology, he said. “We don’t have to connect wires between them.” The similarities to a pacemaker go beyond the leads — so far, in fact, that Robinson considers Motif’s implant a “brain pacemaker.” The technology engages a network in the brain to help people overcome the “oppressive barrier” preventing them from performing tasks like getting out of bed, taking a shower or brushing one’s teeth. Like a pacemaker in a patient’s heart, the Motif implant delivers electrical stimulation and restores natural rhythms in the brain to help people with depression motivate themselves to perform the necessary tasks to get well, he said. “I like the idea of being able to treat psychiatric conditions with a brain pacemaker,” Robinson said. “It’s now accepted that if you suffer from a cardiac condition and your drugs aren’t working for you, you can get an implant and it will likely save your life. The same analogy holds for mental health.”

NATICK, Mass. and QUINCY, Mass., Oct. 12, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Avenge Bio, Inc. ("Avenge"), a clinical stage, oncology-focused biotechnology company developing the LOCOcyte™ Immunotherapy platform for the precision administration of potent immune effector molecules to treat solid tumors, today announced participation in the upcoming investor conference. 3rd Annual Needham Private Biotech Company Virtual 1x1 Forum Date & Time: October 17-18, 2023 In September 2023, Avenge Bio received FDA Fast Track designation for AVB-001. AVB-001 is an encapsulated cell product engineered to produce native human interleukin-2 (hIL-2) and is delivered intraperitoneally (IP) to patients. Avenge is currently enrolling patients in a First-in-Human, Phase 1/2, multicenter clinical trial (NCT05538624) designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of AVB-001. The Company has advanced through multiple dose levels in a dose escalation cohort and expects to initiate a Phase 2 dose expansion trial in 1H 2024. About LOCOcyte™ Platform Our LOCOcyte™ allogeneic cell-based immunotherapy platform enables potent localized modulation of the immune system which also precipitates a systemic immune response, allowing us to treat previously intractable cancers. The technology leverages three unique advantages: Potent immune effector molecules are generated by synthetically engineering allogeneic cells creating a ready-to-use therapy, Therapy is localized in proximity to the primary tumor site and generates innate and adaptive immune response, and The immunomodulator trains the patient's immune system generating a robust immune response that seeks and eradicates distal metastasis without systemic toxicity. About Avenge Bio Avenge Bio, Inc. ("Avenge") is an oncology-focused biotechnology company developing transformative cell-based immunotherapeutic products for the treatment of intractable solid tumors by incorporating its LOCOcyte™ platform. The LOCOcyte™ platform leverages proprietary engineered cells delivered to the local tumor environment that generate high concentrations of immune effector molecules in proximity to the tumor. This initiates a robust, local, and durable systemic immune response while avoiding toxicities associated with systemic immunotherapies. Avenge's most advanced product candidate, AVB-001, produces native IL-2 immunotherapy and is initially being studied in metastatic peritoneal cancers such as ovarian cancer. Avenge has additional pipeline candidates for the treatment of a wide range of cancers including pancreatic, lung and breast cancers. Avenge was founded in 2019 based upon technology developed in the laboratory of Omid Veiseh, Ph.D. and has an exclusive license from Rice University for this technology. To learn more about Avenge visit: and follow us on LinkedIn, X, or Instagram. SOURCE Avenge Bio, Inc.