4.4.23-Health-Decoy-Therapeutics

RICK PIERCE: Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be in front of you all today. I see some familiar faces and some new ones. My name is Rick Pierce.

We are focused-- we've built a platform on peptide conjugates. And I'm here to tell you that virtually all biological activities are regulated through protein-protein interactions, and many of them are undruggable.

But peptides are uniquely, for several different properties, they are very specific. They're very safe. They have high affinity binding. And they can be designed and engineered to fit into pockets.

Decoy has developed a platform that you'll hear about in a minute. And we've made several antiviral drugs borne out of the pandemic. The company was formed three years ago by very experienced drug hunters who've got a number of antivirals and drugs in the market, including myself, sold our last company to Hospira, now Pfizer.

And so we've built an engine that can really develop antivirals very quickly. And it's an AI and machine learning engine. And we're now focusing on cancer, inflammation, and neurology. And just to give you a sense of why peptide conjugates are interesting to us, and we're pretty excited about what we're doing.

For those of you who might recognize on your left-hand side, some structures that make some of the most popular drugs in the press recently, such as Wegovy or Ozempic, which have been big blockbuster drugs and are about to become super blockbuster drugs. These have one function. And Eli Lilly's Mounjaro has two functions, if you will, the GLP and a GIP. But we're excited because we spent the last three years in hiding during COVID building a platform which can now very rapidly make the similar molecules that you just saw.

We use targeting tails of lipids. We have proprietary linkers and warheads. And we can make multiple functions, not just two, but three, four, or five in one drug. We have an AI platform that uses computational design, machine learning, linker chemistry. We have proprietary patented linkers, rapid synthesis.

The fastest peptide synthesizers in the world were made here by our co-founder, Brad Pentelute, at MIT. And so we've been able to show very good efficacy building our platform around antivirals. As I said, we use machine learning just to test how fast the platform is.

About a month ago, we decided that we were going to make a drug for pan-paramyxovirus. And we created a drug in 3 days. And two of the six compounds are pica molar potency and lead quality. So we think we're doing pretty well in the antiviral world.

Our programs are funded through phase 2a by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and imi-care.eu. And we're looking for other partners in the antiviral space, but now we're moving into cancer, inflammation, and neurology. And so why I'm here today is to talk to folks about doing partnerships with us to build out and expand our platform in those areas, both from a drug discovery, clinical development, manufacturing, and distribution partners.

We're currently funded by BARDA, Johnson & Johnson's Blue Knight program, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, imi-care.eu, as well as private venture capital investors. And we are pretty excited. Our lead compound will go in the clinic in just three years since founding. It'll go in the clinic later this year, early 2024, with another coming in right behind it. And we think that we'll probably have a third one that could go into the clinic within a year.

So I'd like to thank the MIT ILP Group. They've been amazing for us. We went to Japan in February and already are in discussions with folks and headed to Korea. So any of you who are here or online, I will be in Korea and would love to meet with you. So thank you very much.