8 minute read
INNOVATOR
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West coast ties:
As someone who co-founded a biotech company at age 30, Punit Dhillon has achieved many successes in the biotech industry in a very short period of time. At 27, he became one of the youngest Canadians to be appointed vice president of a publicly traded biotech company. While at that company, he raised over $125 million through multiple fi nancings and licensing deals, and was involved in several major global acquisitions and a merger.
Perhaps his biggest achievement was cofounding OncoSec Medical two years ago. The San Diego-based company is pioneering a revolutionary new treatment that uses electricity to zap advanced-stage skin cancer.
As president and CEO of OncoSec, Dhillon is leading the company to new frontiers in cancer treatment. An experienced veteran in the start-up fi eld, he is an entrepreneur in every sense of the word.
From 1998 to 2003, Dhillon worked at MDS Capital Corporation (now Lumira Capital Corp.) where he had the opportunity to act as a consultant for several early-stage health and life science companies.
In 2003, he joined Inovio Pharmaceuticals, fi rst as a contracts manager and within fi ve years worked his way up to vice president of Finance and Operations. As vice president of fi nance, Dhillon played a major role in the acquisition and consolidation of Inovio AS, a Norwegian DNA delivery company, and led a key merger with VGX Pharmaceuticals that shaped Inovio into the vaccine-focused company it is today. He also raised over $125 million through multiple fi nancings and several licensing deals.
With each role, Dhillon increased his knowledge of the Canadian and international biotech landscapes. Equipped with a strong skill set in the areas of investment and fi nancing for start-ups, as well as private sector business, Dhillon was ready to pursue new opportunities.
In 2011, a pioneering new technology at Inovio caught his eye. A true entrepreneur and visionary, Dhillon believed he could spin out a company based on the technology, called ImmunoPulse, to target unmet needs in skin cancer treatment.
“We saw a tremendous opportunity in the advancement of skin cancer treatment, where there were very limited treatment options for patients dealing with deadly, metastatic disease,” explains Dhillon. “Most of the treatment options revolved around surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. They were just not the right approach to deal with metastatic disease. We saw an opportunity to advance electroporation [and immunotherapy] in a way that would address this advanced-stage skin cancer.”
ImmunoPulse is a technology that uses an electrical pulse to create temporary pores in cells (electroporation), through which extracellular genetic material can pass and be assimilated into the cell’s DNA.
In cancer cells, chemotherapeutics or gene-based cytokines can be delivered through the temporary pores, allowing for more effective treatment at signifi cantly lower doses.
With this process in mind, the start-up licensed Inovio’s non-DNA vaccine technology and the intellectual property behind electroporation and in March 2011, OncoSec Medical emerged.
Under Dhillon’s leadership, the company has gone from zero development in its pipeline to three Phase 2 studies, all within two years. Since March 2011, it has raised working capital to the tune of $19 million. Currently, the company is working on its revolutionary OncoSec Medical System™ (OMS), a delivery system for treating solid tumours, as well as expanding its ImmunoPulse pipeline.
For Dhillon, developing a treatment for metastatic skin cancer – which previously had no or limited treatment options – is his inspiration and the drive behind OncoSec Medical.
“That’s what has really been the driving force behind pushing this technology forward,” says Dhillon. “We have a technology that is changing the paradigm of the way cancer is being treated.”
The OMS consists of a generator and
Canadian entrepreneur fi nds success south of the border
hand-held applicator designed to deliver DNA-based cytokines and chemotherapeutic agents to target solid tumour cancers.
The company currently has two products in its pipeline: ImmunoPulse, which delivers DNA-based cytokines; and NeoPulse, which delivers a chemotherapeutic.
ImmunoPulse triggers the body’s immune system to identify and eliminate local and metastasized cancer cells. Through electroporation, DNA IL-12 (a plasmid DNA with instructions to produce a protein that can target and destroy cancerous cells) is inserted into the cell. Upon entering, DNA IL-12 triggers the cell to produce the IL-12 protein, which finds and eliminates the cancerous cells as part of a natural immune response.
Its other product, NeoPulse, uses an anticancer drug called bleomycin to kill cancer cells while leaving the healthy cells intact. Traditionally, bleomycin is administered in high doses intravenously. By inserting the chemotherapeutic directly into the cell, NeoPulse uses a significantly smaller dose
of the drug which allows for more effective treatment reducing its harmful side effects.
With this novel product platform, OncoSec Medical is making waves in the medical community. In 2012, the company launched three Phase 2 clinical trials using ImmunoPulse in three of the most difficult to treat skin cancers: metastatic melanoma, Merkel cell carcinoma, and cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Through these trials, the company is validating that its product platform can effectively treat a wide range of skin cancers that previously had very limited treatment options.
One important part of OncoSec’s development is its research collaborations with universities. Through academic partnerships, the company has worked with some of the world’s leading experts on these neglected forms of skin cancer.
“Universities end up being such a major resource in any company’s innovation strategy,” says Dhillon. “I think the academic collaboration between academics and industries is very important because of that inherent scientific expertise that’s going to help develop better therapies, and make sure that people who are on the front lines treating the patients can have input in terms of the design and outcome of a product.”
For companies, he says, it also helps in terms of establishing your development pipeline, even inspiring you to expand your platform.
“Imagine what is possible in the research setting where you’re entering into sponsored research arrangements with some of the top labs that are on the cutting edge of science or a particular field, and you’re looking to establish a broader research pipeline. That’s what we’re doing now.”
Currently, OncoSec Medical is working with the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Pathology to expand its immunotherapy pipeline, and is looking to take its collaborations and studies global.
A better opportunity to collaborate with academic institutions was one of the reasons that Dhillon launched his company in the U.S. Originally from Vancouver, Dhillon chose to start his company in San Diego to take advantage of California’s strong venture capital climate and the collaboration opportunities with universities.
“We just saw that with our particular
technology, we wanted to advance it at the fastest pace that we could,” says Dhillon. “That was by affiliating with these academic institutions that were interested in working with us and the regulations and access to capital that we had in the U.S.”
As a Canadian who built up his empire south of the border, Dhillon brings a unique perspective to how Canada can restructure – not rebuild – its innovation ecosystem.
“We need to be reinforcing a culture of innovation and growth. Canadians are at the cutting edge of research. We have a tremendous amount of talent and resources that we could continue to deploy,” says Dhillon. “I think Canada just needs to build from its strengths: definitely more academic institutional involvement and creating an environment for academic translational research.”
A proud Vancouverite whose family lives in British Columbia, he has kept close ties to Canada while living in San Diego. An avid blogger, Dhillon is an advocate for crossborder collaboration, as well as helping to grow Canada’s biotech industry, including supporting young entrepreneurship initiatives with a new initiative he is working on with colleagues called the Young Entrepreneurship Leadership Launchpad (YELL). Having started his career in Vancouver, he makes sure he is well-informed of the local biotech scene.
“I think the local biotech industry has definitely struggled over the last decade because we’ve had a limited number of deals being done compared to the past. The biggest things that have pushed the industry in that direction is a lack of reinvestment into the industry and sector,” says Dhillon.
“Unfortunately, Canadian investors haven’t seen enough home runs to sustain that kind of face in the market. It’s very unfortunate because biotechnology can be a very lucrative and important industry to public health. But investors need to see that success. Companies usually have more good ideas than money, so it’s more about getting that attitude back where investors can see that opportunity.”
He points to the U.S., and how it is doing a good job of promoting opportunities to investors.
“Biotech thrives really well here [in the United States] because you have great academic institutions, great incubation of new start-up technologies, just great dialogue between industry and academics, and also a lot of investors,” says Dhillon. “We need to reinvigorate that spark back in Canada.”
In terms of becoming a greener pasture for start-ups, Dhillon sees government involvement as crucial.
“I think that there is definitely a role for the government to play in terms of bringing back a funding environment that is more favourable to some of these riskier sectors,” says Dhillon. “Those kinds of programs can be in the forms of grants and tax incentives that can help mitigate the risk and restore the investors’ faith.”
For Canada’s biotech sector to truly succeed, it’s time to move beyond the nationalistic lens, says Dhillon. As we are increasingly involved in a more global economy, he believes Canadian innovators need to look outside the country for financing and expertise.
“Canada is not lacking in any way, it’s just a matter of continuing to build on our strengths,” says Dhillon. “We’re not the size of the U.S., so we can’t compare ourselves to them. We just need to continue to drive the right attitude. There are certain things, like government programs, that we can create to make for a more investor-friendly atmosphere. On a macroscale, Canada doesn’t have to do too much. It’s doing all the right things.”
To see this story online visit www.biotechnologyfocus.ca/ west-coast-ties/
