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It's not just about ideas, its about making ideas happen!

Harvard University’s Office of Technology Development and LabCentral brings you Guppy Tank: Episode 4. Two super-early-stage life-science projects will pitch their innovation concepts to a panel of entrepreneurs and investors for constructive, in-depth feedback. Both are looking to identify the most attractive potential targets and the best strategy to extract commercial value from their unique platforms.  Networking reception to follow. This episode features:

Innovation Team 1:  Enzyme Factor
Selectively targeting undruggable enzymes (Test Case: Insulin-Degrading Enzyme (IDE) inhibitors for treating diabetes)
David Liu and Juan Pablo Maianti (Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, HHMI)
This team has developed a drug discovery platform targeting enzymes that are difficult to drug because they not only process a substrate relevant to disease but also other physiologically important substrates. The platform produces ligands that block processing of the disease-implicated substrate while conserving other important activities mediated by the enzyme. The team will present, as a POC, potent and highly target-specific substrate-selective inhibitors that block IDE-mediated degradation of insulin without affecting IDE’s ability to cleave another endogenous substrate, glucagon.

Innovation Team 2:  The Great Barriers
Modulating the blood-brain and blood-retinal barriers to repair and deliver
Chenghua Gu, Harvard Medical School
Having mapped and carefully characterized the physiological and molecular basis of blood-brain and blood-retinal barrier formation and maintenance, this Harvard innovation team identified key regulatory mechanisms and targets that hold the promise to deliver drugs and repair the respective barriers.

Guppy Tank is brought to you through a partnership between LabCentral and the Harvard Office of Technology, serving to provide super-early stage projects an opportunity to pitch their concept to a panel of entrepreneurs and investors for constructive feedback and suggestions. Join us to be a part of the audience and feedback process.