Success Story: TumorGen

TumorGen is a start-up striving to fight metastasis and save lives. Focusing on biotechnology research, the company is developing a novel drug discovery platform to identify unseen therapeutic targets associated with cancer metastasis. They’re now patented technology is used to capture circulating metastatic cancer cell clusters (MCCCs). The MCCCs have been shown to be the primary vector for disseminating distant metastases in most solid tumor cancers. Their innovative platform can open a new therapeutic target space for biopharma developing drugs impacting cancer metastasis pathways.

After Jeff Allen lost his wife to cancer in 2002, the analytical biochemist put his training to work to learn more about the disease – and eventually started TumorGen. They also joined The Brink SBDC’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

“The SBIR workshop allowed us to prepare a competitive and well-scored application,” describes TumorGen’s Peter Teriete. “The schedule and agenda were really well aligned with the application deadline, and following it helped us to stay on top of many of the administrative requirements which are easily overlooked but can derail the application fast if not taken care of.

“The group of like-minded entrepreneurs in the life science field who we were partnered with provided much constructive feedback on our aims and research strategy. In many ways, they peer-reviewed our application in a manner not too dissimilar with how the study section reviewers at the NIH would do. I would strongly recommend any individual or company considering the (submission of) their first SBIR application to take advantage of what this workshop can offer.”

Advising
Training
Patent obtained

$2,000 in capital
SBIR grant

San Diego, CA 92121

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