Tarveda Therapeutics

Tarveda Therapeutics is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing a new class of potent and selective precision oncology medicines, which it refers to as Pentarin® miniature drug conjugates, for the treatment of patients with various solid tumor malignancies. Tarveda’s Pentarin® miniature drug conjugates are designed to deeply penetrate solid tumors, selectively bind to the desired tumor targets and accumulate their anti-cancer payloads directly in tumor cells. The payload is retained and then released over time causing the anti-cancer payload to become active in the tumor. Tarveda’s first clinical program, PEN-866, is the initial candidate from its Heat Shock Protein 90 (“HSP90”) binding miniature drug conjugate platform. HSP90 is a molecular chaperone that is highly activated in the harsh tumor environment, but which remains relatively dormant in normal tissue. Up to 75% of solid tumors have activated HSP90, and small molecule drugs that target activated HSP90 have desirable binding properties in solid tumors. PEN-866 is a miniature drug conjugate that selectively binds to the activated form of HSP90 linked to a topoisomerase 1 inhibitor (SN-38), a potent anti-cancer payload. PEN-866 has commenced its Phase 2a trial in various types of solid tumors. In addition to PEN-866, Tarveda is developing additional miniature drug conjugates on its HSP90 binding miniature drug conjugate platform to target other promising anti-cancer payloads such as kinase inhibitors and radioisotopes to solid tumors.