click chemistry Archives - Medical Design Sourcing

Click chemistry breakthroughs drive Shasqi and J&J cancer alliance

In June 2023, the click chemistry-focused startup Shasqi revealed a research pact with Johnson & Johnson Enterprise Innovation. More recently, the company announced that it had expanded the research alliance, furthering work on its intratumorally injected biopolymer, known as SQL70. The collaboration will also apply its clinically validated Click Activated Protodrugs Against Cancer (CAPAC) technology to the development of new cancer therapies through preclinical testing.

Inside the click chemistry Shasqi J&J alliance

Shasqi is working with an interventional oncology unit at J&J, which is aiming to take a holistic approach to cancer care that spans therapeutics and therapeutic approaches to meet unmet needs. “That completely matches with our view of the world,” said Dr. José M. Mejía Oneto, the founder and CEO of Shasqi.

The partnership with J&J will bolster research on Shasqi’s intratumorally injected biopolymer SQL70 but also support the …

Nobel-connected startup Shasqi deepens J&J partnership on CAPAC platform

San Francisco-based oncology startup, Shasqi, announced an expansion of its research collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Enterprise Innovation. The partnership centers on Shasqi‘s CAPAC platform, which is an abbreviation for Click-Activated Protodrugs Against Cancer. The platform separates tumor-targeting from the actual drug payload with the aim of maximizing potency while minimizing toxic side effects.

Shasqi’s CAPAC platform taps click chemistry for tumor targeting

CAPAC makes use of a two-part system: a tumor-targeting agent and a cancer therapeutic. When the protodrug locates the tumor’s targeting agent, click chemistry activates it. The technique joins two discrete molecular components much like a seat belt buckle. More precisely, the system makes use of a chemical reaction to precisely activate the cancer drug at the tumor location.

The origins of Shasqi trace back to the research of its founder, Dr. José M. Mejía Oneto, who desc…

Click chemistry company Shasqi has a link to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recently awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to three individuals for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry. Among them was Carolyn Bertozzi, a scientific advisor to Shasqi (San Francisco). The oncology company has developed a novel platform to localize and activate cancer ‘protodrugs’ at a tumor site.

In 2020, Shasqi dosed the first patient with SQ3370, a unique therapy that uses the company’s proprietary click-activated protodrugs against cancer (CAPAC) platform. SQ3370 is intended to activate the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin.

The core of the idea for Shasqi came when Shasqi’s founder and CEO, José M. Mejía Oneto, was in a research phase of an orthopedic surgery residency program at the University of California, Davis. Having earned a chemistry Ph.D., Mejía pondered if there was a better way to deliver a drug to a target site in the body. “The thing that bothered me was that only about 1% o…