Year: 2016-17

Company: City of Hope

Liaison(s): Wendong Huang, Jyotirmoy Kusari

City of Hope ( COH ) is a nonprofit healthcare organization and world renowned leader in cancer, diabetes, and other life threatening diseases. Founded in 1913, COH has long been a pioneer in research, clinical practice, and breakthrough treatment that have since impacted the health care community. With innovations such as synthetic human insulin and Herceptin, COH has impacted millions of lives with the continuing goal of quality of life improvement. On the forefront of innovation, COH is in development of a small molecule drug that can mimic the effects of bariatric surgery, namely weight loss and increased glucose sensitivity. To tackle this project, the COH TMP team was designated five deliverables to be met: scope out the IP landscape, determine appropriate regulatory pathways, analyze the competitive landscape, perform market research, and create a cost-benefit analysis of their drug. Patents relevant to the mechanism of action, indication and drug class were looked at using Google Patents, and the USPTO database. Regulatory pathways were determined for both orphan drug and IND routes with respect to the drug and COH’s position in the market. Market research was performed by both using databases such as the CDC, and gathering surveys at conferences from key opinion leaders. A cost-benefit analysis was performed to formulate the final recommendation for COH from the gathered data. Since the start of the project, smaller-scale analysis of NASH and PBC were performed at the request of the liaisons.