Laura Soucek: a lifetime dedicated to defeating the common factor of cancer

When studying Biology at Sapienza University in Rome, Laura Soucek (Velletri, 1973) stumbled upon the Myc oncogene, involved in multiple essential processes for the development and progression of cancer. "It immediately seemed extraordinary to me because it appeared to play a role in all types of cancer. That was the time when people were starting to say that every cancer was different. But Myc seemed to be a common factor in all of them, which made it a unique opportunity for me because everyone else was focusing on different targets and here was one for all," she recalls.

Almost 30 years have passed since that first encounter, and Laura Soucek has dedicated her entire professional career to counteracting Myc. Since 2014, her research translated into the creation of the spin-off Peptomyc, driven with the support of the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA). With more than 40 million euros raised since then, mainly private funds, the company is now immersed in its second clinical trial, getting closer and closer to launching its drug on the market.

Although Myc had always been considered untouchable, it was known to have a partner, a protein called Max, which it needed to function. Soucek set out to find an alternative partner that would trick it and deactivate it. Before graduating in Biology, she was already studying this oncogene, and when she was doing her doctorate, the first publication arrived in 1998. She named the false partner she devised Omomyc, and it allowed her, for the first time, to inhibit Myc and make cancer cells die. "I remember calling my mother from a phone booth and telling her, "Mom, it worked, it worked!". It was an unforgettable moment for me," says the doctor. Faced with these first promising results, the first resistances from the scientific community appeared, who considered her finding minor and warned her that it would surely have side effects and affect non-diseased cells.

Although the Myc oncogene had always been considered untouchable, Laura Soucek set out to find a partner that would trick it and deactivate it

Soucek left her native Italy and he went to the United States, to the University of California (UCSF), where he began to conduct the first preclinical trials with mice"They developed lung tumors that disappeared when Omomyc was activated. It was an extraordinary discovery because it demonstrated its therapeutic impact and because no side effects occurred," he indicates. The results were published inNature in 2008, "changing the paradigm worldwide about the possibility of attacking Myc and other laboratories started working on developing their own inhibitor."

Along the way, she met oncologist Josep Baselga. He convinced her to settle in Barcelona and work at VHIO, where she could do translational research with patients. Soucek arrived in the Catalan capital in 2011 and began using Omomyc in human tumors, specifically brain tumors, and it also worked: "We decided that something had to be done, that it had to be taken to the clinic." Despite continued medical reviews that distrusted her results and did not believe that Omomyc could be a drug, the doctor focused on finding a way to develop it so that it could be used as a medicine. When it turned out that Omomyc could penetrate cells, a key factor for it to function as a drug, her goal suddenly seemed closer.

And so it was. Laura Soucek, accompanied by her postdoctoral student Marie-Eve Beaulieu, patented Omomyc as a drug in 2013, and a year later, the idea she had had as a young woman while studying transformed into the spin-off Peptomyc. Launched with savings from both co-founders and funds from VHIO and ICREA, they began to seek public funds to start analyzing whether the biotech company was viable and profitable. The European Commission, Acció, the Ministry of Economy, and the CDTI were their first public investors, while the first round closed in 2016 for one million euros, led by the venture capital Healthequity SCR. A year later, the second round came, for 4.2 million euros, this time led by Alta Life Science. In 2020, the third, for 11.4 million euros, with the Italian fund Aurora Science at the helm.

Peptomyc was created in 2014 and has raised more than 40 million euros since then, mainly private funds

As resources came in, the team grew, and the path was paved for the company's first milestone: "For us, the most exciting moment was reaching the clinical trial in 2021, finally, after so many years."With the focus on solid tumors ---located in organs and not in the blood---, it began in April of that year with 22 patients who had tried all standard therapies, with very advanced disease, already with metastasis.This first human trial aimed to demonstrate the drug's safety. At the end of the study, eight participants benefited from the drug, administered intravenously, which managed to stabilize their cancer and stop its progression. Among them, Soucek highlights, there was one with pancreatic cancer, one of the most complicated and with few efficient current therapies, who had a reduction in tumor burden to half its initial size.Omomyc thus became the first treatment that inhibits MYC to successfully complete the first phase of a clinical trial.

Since last November, Peptomyc has been immersed in its second clinical trial, this time combining Omomyc with chemotherapy to test its efficacy in pancreatic cancer, which allows treating patients in a less advanced stage of the disease compared to the first trial. It is being carried out in the Vall d'Hebron hospitals, the Institut Català d'Oncologia (ICO), the Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón in Madrid, and the Hospital Universitario Miguel Servet in Zaragoza.

Raising 20 million euros and finding a pharmaceutical company

Coinciding with its second clinical trial, Peptomyc has received a grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) of 2.5 million euros. It is accompanied by a minimum of 2.5 million euros more in equity, which implies that it has to seek private funds to complement the EIC's disbursement. For the company, the ideal would be to obtain a total of 20 million euros ---half contributed by the EIC and the other by private investors---. "These resources allow us to fully finance the study focused on pancreatic cancer and also allow us to invest in optimizing the cost and industrial production of the drug, and in a new generation of medicines that we want to develop for other types of cancer," says Soucek.

At this point, the company, with a staff of 16 employees, is also looking to partner with a pharmaceutical company to be able to bring its treatment to more patients. Peptomyc's forecast is to be able to reach the market and start commercializing its drug by 2028. "We are in the famous valley of death: we are right on the verge of success or failure," explains its CEO, who is always thinking about finding funds wherever necessary, "fundraising, fundraising, fundraising," she repeats to herself, "we never stop," without losing the illusion of curing cancer that she has harbored since she was little more than 20 years old.