Chris Hulme’s Branch Therapeutics Receives $4M in Seed Funding

Chris Hulme, PhD, professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and co-director at the Arizona Center for Drug Discovery, is advancing a new treatment for colorectal cancer that also shows considerable promise in addressing multiple cancer types. 

Along with co-founders and long-term collaborators Curtis Thorne, associate professor of cellular and molecular medicine at the College of Medicine – Tucson, and Dr. Sourav Banerjee of the University of Dundee, Branch Therapeutics operates in the oncology small-molecule drug discovery space to develop multi-targeted kinase inhibitors for the treatment of colorectal cancer and other malignancies.

“This is bona fide drug discovery in an academic setting comprised of a village of student drug hunters, therapeutic area specialists, and ADME/PK experts, which has now morphed into an exciting new startup. The name Branch, coined by Dr. Thorne, derives from the branched nature of human kinome,” says Hulme.

Hulme’s expertise lies in small-molecule drug design that spans the value chain from compound screening collection construction to IND enabling studies. He trains medicinal chemistry drug hunters who engineer molecules to exhibit desired disease modifying effects within a safe therapeutic window. In doing so, they enhance inhibitory affinity for key disease promoting proteins and importantly molecular properties that facilitate oral delivery and desired exposure of drugs in target tissue.

As co-director of the Arizona Center for Drug Discovery, Hulme is developing effective therapeutics for various diseases, predicated on a milestone-driven philosophy to multi-parameter optimization in small-molecule drug discovery. The process requires an array of skill sets to address the many facets of discovery. Bringing together collaborators with those skills at the right time and effectively triaging molecules on the value chain is a key role that drug hunters play.

This isn’t Hulme’s first startup. In 2018, he co-founded Iluminos Therapeutics with ASU researcher Travis Dunckley, to study a candidate drug they hope will successfully block the development or advancement of Alzheimer’s disease in Down syndrome patients. If effective, the drug would mark a major breakthrough for individuals with Down syndrome. It may also introduce a novel strategy for treating late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, the most prevalent form of dementia. Over time, this approach could be extended to address other neurodegenerative disorders as well. Currently, the project has entered the chemistry, manufacturing, and control (CMC) phase. Once complete, this and data from further toxicology studies will form the basis of an investigational new drug application.

It was through re-engineering the advanced molecules identified in that initial drug discovery campaign that Hulme developed a new multi-targeted approach to several types of cancer. The breakthrough was in WNT signaling, essential for intestinal stem cell maintenance. Aberrant activation of this pathway drives the initiation and progression of nearly all colorectal cancers (CRC). To date, no drugs that inhibit the WNT pathway have been FDA-approved, often due to dose-limiting toxicity.  The technology licensed by Branch Therapeutics from the Hulme lab is comprised, in part, of a potent series of WNT inhibitors with superior activity over a panel of benchmark WNT inhibitors, whilst having drastically reduced cellular toxicity. 

Development of this technology is even more critical with the growing number of patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer who have limited treatment options, and with currently available treatment options, drug resistance can often develop. The recent round of funding was four years in the making, having initially started developing compounds to target adult glioblastoma and pediatric brain cancer known as diffuse pontine glioma (DIPG). Recognizing that additional malignancies were within reach of their unique approach, they are now pursuing ways to unlock therapeutics with a focus on colorectal cancer, while being cognizant of clear opportunities to target glioblastoma, triple-negative breast cancer, acute myeloid leukemia, and liver cancer. 

Although Branch Therapeutics was jump-started with financial support from the Critical Path Institute’s (C-Path) Translational Therapeutics Accelerator (TRxA) and the Flinn Foundation, this latest $4M investment provides the opportunity to progress to candidate selection and IND enabling studies. On completion of the latter, the investigational new drug will enter human trials.