KAI Pharmaceuticals: No Nonsense

“No” is something that KAI Pharmaceuticals’ founders (Daria Mochly-Rosen and Leon Chen) heard more times than they could count three years ago while they were raising the initial funding for the company. In fact, they discovered that potential investors were not shy about telling these entrepreneurs exactly what they hated and loved about KAI’s technology – a portfolio of drug candidates with applications for treating cardiovascular disease, stroke, pain, and drug addiction. But KAI’s founders were undeterred. They were determined to see these drugs, which had already shown promising results in pig hearts, start down the path to becoming human therapies.

After all, it was the “no’s” that led them to forming a new company in the first place. Basic research over ten years in Mochly-Rosen’s lab at Stanford had resulted in the discovery of a series of molecules that work by selectively targeting a family of proteins called Protein Kinase C (PKC). Originally, OTL and Mochly-Rosen hoped to license the technology to an existing company for drug development. However, these companies had tried and failed to make PKC-targeting drugs in the past. They could not be convinced that the novel set of drug candidates from Stanford were able to zero-in on individual PKC family members and avoid the unwanted side effects that caused problems with previous drug candidates.

At this point it became apparent to Mochly-Rosen and Chen that the best chance for commercializing the technology was through a new venture. So they reluctantly became entrepreneurs. KAI (which is an acronym for Kinase Activators and Inhibitors) eventually found investors who said yes. With that initial round of financing, the founders accomplished their objective of getting a lead product (DELTAMI) into patients in a clinical trial. Mochly-Rosen credits OTL for its role in making this goal a reality by ensuring that Stanford had the intellectual property protection necessary to provide incentive for undertaking such a costly endeavor.

In the past year KAI Pharmaceuticals completed a Phase IIA drug trial for DELTAMI to treat reperfusion injury after heart attacks. It also closed on its second round of funding (for $35 million) and formed an alliance with a large pharmaceutical company. In addition, there are more candidates in the pipeline. The company is planning to begin clinical trials on its second drug candidate by the end of the year. Now KAI does not hear “no” quite so often.