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PlantForm Corporation is a Canadian company formed in 2008 to commercialize a low-cost, plant-based manufacturing platform for monoclonal antibodies, protein drugs and vaccines for cancer and other critical illnesses.

The company’s technology platform provides several advantages over mammalian cell culture and other fermentation systems used to produce most biologic drugs on the market today: it’s fast, efficient, highly versatile (for new product development) and easily scalable. Best of all, it’s capable of reducing manufacturing costs for life-saving drugs by up to 90 per cent.

PlantForm licenses its technology from the University of Guelph, where it was developed by Dr. J. Christopher Hall, a PlantForm founder and the company’s Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Hall held the Canada Research Chair in Recombinant Antibody Technology from 2002 to 2014 and is a leading authority in the field. All relevant intellectual property is protected by patent filings.

PlantForm’s pipeline features both innovator and biosimilar products, including:

• biosimilar trastuzumab, a plant-produced version of the $6-billion breast cancer drug Herceptin® (animal studies successfully completed, human clinical trials scheduled for 2014, market entry anticipated 2017)

• biosimilar versions of two additional oncology drugs with combined annual global sales of $11.4 billion (2010)

• innovator antibodies for HIV/AIDS, funded by the Government of Canada and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

• recombinant butyrylcholinesterase (rBuChE), an enzyme used as preventative medicine for people vulnerable to attack by nerve agents, organophosphates or other stimulants ($1.8-million contract with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and $800,00 contract with Defence Canada)

Prize4Life is a non-profit organization founded in 2006 in Cambridge, MA focused on accelerating therapy development for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, aka Lou Gehrig's disease). Prize4Life uses incentive prizes to attract new minds and drive innovation in ALS drug development. The organization is running the $1M Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize4Life challenge for preclinical validation of a novel ALS therapeutic in an ALS mouse model, and submissions to this prize will be accepted until June 6th 2015. In addition to prizes, Prize4Life also runs infrastructure programs to support the ALS research community, such as the ALS FORUM, an online portal of cutting edge research and drug development news in ALS (www.researchals.org).

Prolog Ventures is a venture capital firm based out of St. Louis Missouri that was founded in 2001. The firm is currently making investments out of its vintage 2013 4th fund of approximately $100 million. The firm is looking to make equity investments in companies ranging from $500,000 to $3 million. The firm will invest in companies across the United States and plans to make approximately 3-4 investments over the next 6-9 months.

Promosome is a synthetic biology company founded to commercialize the discoveries of the late Nobel Laureate, Dr. Gerald M. Edelman, and colleague Dr. Vincent P. Mauro of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla, CA. Leveraging Dr. Edelman’s and Mauro's unparalleled expertise in the area of mRNA translation and the resulting technologies they pioneered, Promosome offers technology licensing opportunities to biotherapeutic and bioindustrial companies seeking to dramatically improve efficiencies in expression, secretion, and potentially biotherapeutic safety and dose tolerance.

In March 2014, GEHC and Promosome executed an agreement to license a subset of Promosome’s initial technology suite in support of their mammalian cell line development ambitions.

Promosome operates a developmental center in the Torrey Pines section of San Diego which focuses on expanding its mRNA translation-based toolset as well as identifying and developing a pipeline of proprietary proteins which can be differentiated by their unique manufacturing attributes (higher yields, greater homogeneity, etc.) and quite possibly by their safety profile in clinical use.

PxRadia is applying its HD-mAb technology platform to provide increased therapeutic potency to biosimiliar monoclonal antibodies. These antibodies are directed to validated targets such as Her-2, CD-20 and PD-1/PD-L.  We and our partners will share new IP and rights and differentiation from current products in the marketplace.

RCT Ventures invests in early-stage life science companies including medical devices, drug discovery platforms, and research tools.

RiverVest Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that was founded in 2000 and is based in St. Louis, Missouri with additional office in Cleveland, Ohio. The firm currently has managed over $208 million of total assets. RiverVest has raised two investment funds with total committed capital of $165 million since inception. The recent fund closed at $75 million. RiverVest typically makes equity investments into global companies, and has no specific geographic preferences. The firm will consider making investments at all the stages, and focuses on investments in seed, early-stage and select later-stage companies. The typical investment size is around $6 million, though the firm can invest more or less, depending on the opportunity. 

RiverVest is extremely opportunistic when it comes to investments in the life sciences space; with that being said RiverVests specified sectors and sub sectors of interest may or may not be an area in which RiverVest is currently looking to allocate capital to. The firm invests in companies in the biotech therapeutics and diagnostics, as well the medical technology space. 

Some of the firms investments have included companies developing biotech therapeutics and diagnostics targeting diseases of the blood and blood forming organs, neoplasms, cancer, and oncology, skin and subcutaneous tissue, cardiovascular diseases, diseases of the ear, and infectious diseases. The firm has also invested in companies developing anti-body based therapeutics. The firm has also invested in firms developing medical technologies such as therapeutic radiation devices, active implantable devices, non active implantable devices, hospital hardware, and imaging devices.

F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. is a Swiss global health-care company that operates worldwide under two divisions: Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostics. Roche is looking for first-in-class or best-in-class opportunities that address diseases of unmet medical need and have the potential to revolutionize the standard of care. Roche focuses on their main disease therapy areas – oncology and Immuno-oncology, ophthalmology, infectious diseases and neurosciences–as well as looking at opportunities in promising technologies and early-stage collaborations. Beyond the asset, Roche always look for the right partnership and cultural fit. Roche also seeks collaboration in diagnostics, specifically biomarkers.