Erik Van Den Berg

Biotech

Step Pharma is the world leader in the discovery and development of inhibitors of CTPS1 (cytidine triphosphate synthase 1) for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. Step Pharma’s lead program dencatistat (STP938) is a first in class, potent, selective, oral inhibitor of CTPS1 with demonstrated anti-tumor activity. Dencatistat entered clinical development in 2022 in a PhI/II study for the treatment of relapsed and refractory T-cell and B-cell lymphoma. More recently a solid tumour study was started focused on ovarian cancer using the concept of synthetic lethality and biomarker selection of patients. This can ultimately be viewed as a tumour agnostic approach with ovarian cancer being the PoC indication and future plans to expand into other tumour types such as NSCLC with high prevalence of the biomarker.

Lead Pharma is a pharmaceutical company focusing on the discovery and development of innovative medicines for the treatment of immune diseases and cancer. Lead Pharma is headquartered at Pivot Park, the biopharmaceutical life sciences campus in Oss, the Netherlands. We have fully equipped labs for all stages of drug discovery, including medicinal chemistry, cellular pharmacology, and molecular pharmacology, as well as an “in silico” lab for our computational chemistry, bioinformatics, and data mining activities. Lead Pharma has a qualified team of 29 people of which 10 hold a PhD degree and have long term experience working in large pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies and academia.

The mission of HollandBIO, the Dutch biotech industry association, is to maximize the contribution of biotech innovations to our society’s health and sustainability. We represent, support and connect an active, privately funded, and rapidly growing community of more than 270 member companies. Our members are a reflection of the biotech sector: from start-ups and SMEs to large companies and multinationals, active in fields ranging from healthcare and agri-food to biobased applications and cultured meat. By tackling the obstacles that hinder our frontrunners, HollandBIO aims for progress - even when that means challenging the status quo.

Biotech

AM-Pharma BV is a biopharmaceutical company developing recombinant Alkaline Phosphatase for clinical use.

At LAVA, we are focused on applying our expertise in gamma-delta T-cell engagers (TCEs) to transform cancer therapy. We refer to our compounds as gamma-delta bispecific T-cell engagers, or gamma-delta bsTCEs. Our platform generates therapeutics that specifically activate a unique and relatively abundant effector gamma-delta T-cell subset called Vγ9Vδ2 (Vgamma9-Vdelta2) T-cells that have the ability to trigger activity of immune cells of both the innate and adaptive immune system. Our gamma-delta bsTCEs have demonstrated superior efficacy and safety profiles compared to other bsTCE approaches in preclinical studies and show preferential activity against tumor cells thereby potentially limiting toxicity in healthy tissue. To date, we are the only company developing bispecific gamma-delta T-cell engaging antibodies for the treatment of cancer. We are building a pipeline of gamma-delta bsTCEs that have applications in both solid and hematologic malignancies. Our lead program, LAVA-051, targets the tumor specific antigen CD1d, which can be overexpressed in multiple myeloma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and acute myeloid leukemia (AML), among other tumor types. LAVA-051 will enter a Phase I/IIa study in 1Q21.