- 3 years ago
Hillstream BioPharma is a biotechnology company developing a focused portfolio of therapeutic candidates targeting drug-resistant and devastating cancers. The company’s emerging immuno-oncology pipeline is led by HSB-3215.
The company recently teamed up with Minotaur Therapeutics to license one of its key technologies. The tech will allow Hillstream to create more targeted and efficient therapies and advance its drug pipeline more rapidly.
The company recently teamed up with Minotaur Therapeutics to license one of its key technologies. The tech will allow Hillstream to create more targeted and efficient therapies and advance its drug pipeline more rapidly.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hi Randy, how are you doing today?
00:06 - It's another happy day, I hope same for you.
00:08 - Yeah, love to hear it.
00:09 Well, it's Friday and it's always good news.
00:12 So before we get started, Randy,
00:14 do you mind just giving me a quick,
00:16 brief overview of Hillstream,
00:18 we know what you guys are doing?
00:19 - Sure, so Hillstream's focused on drug resistant cancers,
00:23 those rare cancers that are really hard to treat,
00:26 or the cancer reoccurs in some of these patients.
00:28 So that's our focus, that's our mission statement.
00:31 - Got it, and then can you share a little bit
00:34 about your background, Randy?
00:35 Like what brought you here?
00:36 What brought you to Hillstream?
00:37 - Sure, so I'm a pharmacist by training.
00:40 I was a four year scholarship person with the ROTC,
00:44 so I served four years in the military
00:46 as a hospital pharmacist.
00:47 I had a tough duty assignment though,
00:49 I was stationed at San Francisco
00:50 at Letterman Arnie Medical Center
00:52 for their entire four years of my military obligation.
00:56 Once I finished my military obligation,
00:58 I went back for an MBA at Washington University
01:00 in St. Louis, started my pharmaceutical career
01:03 at Mead Johnson Labs, which is now,
01:05 was part of Bristol-Myers Squibb,
01:08 in a management development program.
01:10 Did a stint at DuPont Merck, a number of cool jobs there
01:13 from market research, product management,
01:16 business development, strategic planning.
01:18 I did a stint at Goldman Sachs
01:20 as a biotechnology analyst.
01:21 I had a great mentor, May Ken Hull,
01:23 and did a couple of ransom businesses at DuPont.
01:28 And most recently, prior to this,
01:30 I was the CEO of another publicly traded company
01:32 called CoreMedix.
01:33 And while I was there, we took the market cap
01:35 from 3 million up to 350 million.
01:37 - Wow, well, a little bit of a personal connection there,
01:42 Randy, I actually grew up in St. Louis,
01:44 about 10 minutes from Forest Park,
01:46 so I know Washington University well.
01:47 My little sister is a WashU grad, so go Bears.
01:51 - Yeah, there you go.
01:54 - So what developments are in the pipeline
01:56 for Hillstream Bio right now, Randy?
01:59 And can you elaborate on Hillstream's lead program,
02:02 HSB 3215, and your focus portfolio
02:06 of therapeutic candidates targeting drug-resistant
02:09 and devastating cancers?
02:11 - Yeah, so HSB 3215, as you said,
02:14 it's both, it's a HER, I'll use an acronym.
02:17 Let's call it HER2 and HER3.
02:19 On this case, it's not a pronoun.
02:20 It means that human epidermal growth factor,
02:23 number two, and human epidermal growth factor, number three.
02:27 So what this really means is these are on the outside,
02:30 these stimulate cancer growth.
02:32 So what a lot of people are,
02:35 and Roche Genentech built this road, by the way,
02:37 for HER7, so that was the first HER2
02:39 that came in the marketplace.
02:41 What we've done is we've licensed this technology
02:46 from Applied Biosciences Institute.
02:47 They've done the heavy lifting, they've done the discovery.
02:50 What we're good at, and what I did at Cormetics,
02:52 is execution, and it's putting the team together
02:55 to execute and advance this into the clinic.
02:57 - Got it.
02:59 So Randy, I know you recently announced a collaboration
03:02 with Minotaur Therapeutics to license
03:05 and further advance the development
03:07 of next-generation targeted biologics
03:09 against HER3 and IND filing for HSB.
03:13 Could you provide insight into how these validated targets
03:16 support the company's development of progress
03:19 toward novel next-generation targeted cancer biologics?
03:23 - Absolutely.
03:24 So just like we're going after the HER2,
03:25 which is a well-established target,
03:27 the issue with the HER2, though, as I mentioned,
03:30 the road has been built by Roche Genentech,
03:32 but it was launched in 1998.
03:34 And this goes back to our corporate mission.
03:36 Cancer's very smart, and it develops resistance.
03:39 And what you combine the HER2 and HER3,
03:42 it's like this growth factor on steroids.
03:46 So what we do is with the bispecific,
03:48 by binding to it, we shut off that signal.
03:51 And what I did with the Minotaur, which you referred to,
03:53 is both Minotaur and Omniab.
03:55 Omniab is a spin-out of Ligand.
03:57 And there we're going after PD-1.
04:00 And as everyone knows,
04:01 you've seen those commercials on Keytruda, Keytruda Opdivo.
04:05 That's a PD-1.
04:06 We're anti-PD-1.
04:07 And in our case, what's novel about this
04:10 is we've licensed this technology from Minotaur,
04:12 from Dr. Von Smider, and it has peakle bodies.
04:16 So we feel that we can hit epitopes or targets
04:20 on these cancer types that the other drugs,
04:25 the bigger monoclonal antibodies, which are huge,
04:28 compare it to like a peakle body being a car
04:31 and a monoclonal antibody being like three houses.
04:34 So by hitting these other undruggable targets,
04:37 these cracks and crevices, if you will,
04:39 we can cut off the signal
04:41 and really shut down that programmed cell death signal.
04:45 - Interesting.
04:46 So obviously, cancer is kind of like a big problem out there
04:52 which makes it a big market opportunity for companies.
04:55 What's your long-term vision for Hillstream?
04:58 - So our long-term vision is to build a platform.
05:01 So we're starting right now.
05:02 I always tell the team,
05:03 we have to get one through the keyhole,
05:05 and that's HSB3215.
05:08 But we can build a platform on that backbone
05:11 by attaching these peakle bodies and going into the ADC,
05:15 which is antibody drug conjugates.
05:16 And that's attaching a toxin to the bispecific itself.
05:21 So you can actually do a one, two, three punch.
05:25 And I say one, two,
05:26 because as you shut off the signal with the bispecific,
05:29 you have a toxin that kills it.
05:31 And then the three is the toxin leaks out
05:34 and kills the nearby, they call it a bystander effect,
05:37 kills the cells nearby.
05:39 So those may be cancerous cells,
05:40 but maybe they don't have an over preponderance of HER2.
05:43 So it's a one, two, three punch.
05:45 And we're gonna build a platform with different toxins.
05:48 We have some proprietary toxins
05:50 that we can attach for our ADC.
05:52 We call it in our pipeline, it's 0059.
05:55 - Got it.
05:57 So, and Randy, I mean, how has cancer research changing?
06:02 What have been the biggest changes
06:04 that you've seen over the last five years or so maybe?
06:06 - Well, we can even go back longer than that.
06:09 So when I started as a pharmacist,
06:11 it was chemotherapy and chemotherapy
06:14 not only killed the cancer,
06:15 but it also killed the healthy cells as well.
06:19 What you're seeing now is if you attend to the ASCO,
06:22 the American Society of Clinical Oncology,
06:24 you're seeing a preponderance of this precision oncology.
06:27 Precision oncology is just like we're talking
06:29 about the bispecific.
06:31 You're targeting that individual cancer cell.
06:33 You're not targeting a healthy cell.
06:36 As a result of that, you're getting longer,
06:39 the patients can live longer and greater efficacy
06:42 without those side effects that can be debilitating.
06:46 - That makes sense.
06:48 And then, so Randy, do you have any,
06:52 I'm gonna ask you kind of for a hot take here real quick.
06:55 How do you think AI will, and machine learning will,
06:58 do you think that will be important
07:01 in the fight against cancer, do you think,
07:03 in 20 years? - Absolutely.
07:04 - Okay. - No, absolutely.
07:05 - Explain that a little bit.
07:07 - So AI, as you know, is all about data.
07:09 And in oncology, data is king.
07:11 And that's as we advance our technology,
07:13 you gather more data.
07:14 But as when I talked about building a platform,
07:17 we'll build out and collect a lot of this data
07:19 on both on the HER2 or HER3,
07:23 as well as on the PICO bodies.
07:25 And then you can use artificial intelligence to say,
07:27 I would say it's more like Legos.
07:29 Can you put these different pieces together
07:31 and have greater efficacy?
07:32 - That makes a lot of sense.
07:35 Well, Randy, is there anything else
07:37 you would like to add today?
07:39 You know, it's been a pleasure to learn more
07:41 about Hellstream Bio as well as your story.
07:44 - Well, I think one of the comments
07:46 that was made on the previous,
07:47 just before we came on, was about execution.
07:49 And what I would like to say about that,
07:51 we're an execution story.
07:53 So one of the things as a CEO,
07:55 I have to identify what my weaknesses are,
07:57 where we need help.
07:58 And that's when I bring in the team.
08:00 And you have to, the team will evolve as the company grows.
08:03 But the first thing, as I said a few minutes ago,
08:05 get one through the keyhole, generate that data,
08:07 demonstrate that it works.
08:09 And we have a platform of technologies
08:10 that can fast follow.
08:12 - Just get one through the keyhole.
08:14 I like that.
08:15 I'm gonna start using that in my life as well.
08:17 Well, Randy Millby, the chairman and CEO
08:20 of Hellstream Bio Pharma, that is ticker H-I-L-S,
08:23 trading on the NASDAQ.
08:24 Randy, thank you again for joining us today on Benzinga.
08:28 Hope to catch up with you at some point in the future.
08:30 - Absolutely, thanks, Aaron.
08:31 (upbeat music)
08:34 (upbeat music)