How Celcuity CEO Brian Sullivan Is Framing Cancer Drug Development Around Hope for Patients

“Essentially these women, who have a very tough prognosis, we think we can be a big part of giving them hope, allowing them to have a longer period of time with their families and friends, and hopefully put this disease—you won’t necessarily cure it—but you can really allow these patients to have a longer and hopefully better life.”

Celcuity was founded with a mission that goes beyond conventional drug development. The company is working on targeted therapies for solid tumors, focusing on some of difficult challenges in cancer research and working to broaden treatment options for patients with limited options.

“Well, we’re evaluating our drug in women who’ve progressed after they’ve first line of therapy for metastatic disease, and they’re really not very good alternatives for them,” Sullivan explains.

“And so our hypothesis was that we could substantially improve outcomes for these women. Essentially these women and have a very tough prognosis and we think we can be a big part of giving them hope, allowing them to have a longer period of time with their families and friends.”

Sullivan then explains how scientists discovered an important system inside cells called the “PAM pathway.”

The pathway Sullivan talks about was found inside cells that that regulate growth, and when the pathway becomes abnormal it can drive cancer cells to multiply and spread, leading researchers to develop treatments that target and slow this process.

“So for 20 years, every major pharmaceutical company has attempted to block this pathway effectively. And it’s been very tricky because it’s a very complex pathway. It includes six targets in one,” says Sullivan.

Describing a balancing tradeoff in treatment strategy—he explained how when one pathway is targeted, you may unintentionally reduce activity in another, so the goal is to broadly block all six components to prevent that compensatory “push-pull” effect.

Sullivan explains, “And then because this pathway regulates some very important metabolic processes physiologically as well as in your cells, when you shut it down comprehensively, you can induce a lot of toxicity.”

He noted that for two decades, “It’s been this question of how can you get the potential benefit of targeting this pathway without inducing so much toxicity? The patient can’t stay on it. And so we’re the first multi-target inhibitor that could comprehensively shut this pathway down. That is a very efficacious and B, very well tolerated.

Referring to his company’s experimental breast cancer drug called gedatolisib, Sullivan says they discovered the drug that targets an important cancer-related pathway.

Although gedatolisib was once dropped by a major pharmaceutical company, his team believed it still had strong potential and chose to continue developing it based on their own research.

“I think when you’re a small company, you really, really focus and you are much more intensely aware of what’s required. You can move very quickly and you can be decisive and you basically take calculated risks to hopefully create a successful result. And I think sometimes at major pharma, you don’t get that intense focus and you might not get the necessary level of understanding that’s required to really understand, in this case, how good this drug was,” he adds.

“I think our bottoms up view of the data from basically live cell activity and our ability to see how much better this drug was than other drugs of its type just told us, wow, they don’t understand what they’re missing here. This could be really a practice changing drug.”

Sullivan says his entrepreneurial background shapes how he thinks about science and drug development.

Instead of starting with traditional approaches, he focuses on understanding the basics—what’s actually happening in the biology of the disease and where the biggest unmet needs are.

Sullivan believes that when you clearly identify the core problem and focus on solving it, it can lead to meaningful improvements in patient outcomes.

Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

---