Alentis Therapeutics: The Venture Leader Biotech developing breakthrough treatments for rare diseases and cancers

29.08.2022 09:00, Tracy Woodley

This fall, the Venture Leaders Biotech will represent Swiss innovation in the United States. To select the 10 featured startups, a jury of professional investors and medtech experts reviewed 90 applications. These startups improve diagnostics, treatments, and well-being with innovative solutions that cover artificial intelligence, sensors, smart devices, and robotics. Allow us to introduce you to each of the Venture Leaders Biotech 2022 ahead of the September 2022 roadshow in Boston and Cambridge: Meet Roberto Iacone, the CEO and co-founder of Alentis Therapeutics.

Name: Roberto Iacone 
Location: Basel
Nationality: Italian 
Graduated from: M.D. from University of Naples Federico II, Ph.D. from Max Planck Research School for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (2008) 
Job title: CEO of Alentis Therapeutics 
Number of employees: 19 
Money raised: USD 81.5 million
First touchpoint with Venturelab: Swiss Top Biotech award 2021


Explain what your startup does and why.
Alentis is developing a portfolio of unique monoclonal antibodies that are highly selective for exposed, non-junctional Claudin-1, a previously unexploited target in the pathology of fibrosis and fibrotic tumors. With these antibodies, we are pioneering novel approaches to modify and reverse the course of disease progression in e.g., liver, kidney, or lung fibrosis as well as solid fibrotic tumors, disease areas with a high unmet medical need, currently the lead therapeutic candidate, ALE.F02 is in Phase 1 clinical studies. 

How and where did you come up with the idea for your startup?
The company was founded in 2019 based on ground-breaking research in the laboratory of Prof. Thomas Baumert MD at the University of Strasbourg and the French National Institute of Health (INSERM). The Alentis portfolio of unique monoclonal antibodies targets exposed, non-junctional Claudin-1, which plays a key role in the pathology of fibrosis. We are leveraging our anti-CLDN1 portfolio to explore novel MoAs to treat disease areas of high unmet medical need like fibrosis in the liver, kidney, and lung, as well as fibrotic tumors. 

What do you expect from the Venture Leaders roadshow, and how will it help you achieve your vision?? 
The Venture Leaders roadshow is a unique opportunity to represent Swiss excellence and innovation and how biotech companies like Alentis Therapeutics can potentially transform the treatment landscape for an underserved patient population. Additionally, Alentis will benefit from the exposure and exchange with peers and higher visibility across the investor community.  

Who does your product or solution help, and how?
Alentis Therapeutics’ portfolio targets fibrosis not indirectly, by treating symptoms, but rather at the root, directly affecting the pathology and progression of fibrosis. With this novel MoA, several indications can be treated and potentially reversed like fibrosis in kidney, liver, and lungs, including rare diseases, as well as solid fibrotic tumors. Currently, there are three to four million patients suffering from liver fibrosis (F3 and cF4), and 45.000 patients with kidney fibrosis due to AAV-RPGN as well as 180.000 patients with fibrotic tumors non-responsive to IO therapy newly diagnosed in the US each year. Alentis Therapeutics can offer new solutions and options in the therapy of fibrosis for these patients. 

What are you most excited about at work right now?
We are currently at the late stages of Phase I for ALE.F02 and are very excited about the read-out later this year. Given positive data, we are looking forward to entering the next stage in clinical development for this antibody. On top of this, we are exploring new indications in fibrotic tumors and preparing our strategy and approach for these. Overall, we are at a very exciting point in the company’s development, looking at different opportunities and understanding which indications and molecules have the highest unmet need with a high probability of success to ensure that these patients can benefit from new and better treatment options. 

How did you build your team?
After Alentis Therapeutics was founded in 2019, I joined as CEO in 2020. Since then, we have built a team with long-standing industry expertise across different areas of business. The team is of course built around the current need for specific skills and addressed by either internal hiring or depending on the task with external consultants to stay lean and flexible. But we are also pursuing a long-term strategy to gather the best talent in accordance with our vision for the next 2 to 5 years and to build the internal expertise that can drive Alentis and the portfolio to success in the next steps of clinical development and subsequent approval and commercialization. 

Which market are you addressing and what is the potential of your startup? 
There are several indications that are driven by fibrosis directly across different organs like the liver, kidney, and lung as well as by fibrotic properties and subsequent immune evasion of several tumor indications. The Alentis portfolio has the potential to address all these markets spanning from patients with liver fibrosis at the F3 and cF4 stage, to kidney fibrosis due to AAV-RPGN, over lung fibrosis to patients with solid tumors with fibrotic properties. 

What are your key achievements to date?
Phase 1 for ALE.F02 started in Q4 2021 and is still ongoing and we are at the late stage of pre-clinical development for ALE.C04. 

Additionally, we have and are assembling a team of experienced leaders in several key areas to further drive the portfolio development in pre-clinical and clinical studies across our key areas of interest, fibrosis in various organs as well as cancer. To fully leverage the potential of Alentis Therapeutics we are exploring several options to further drive the development of CLDN1 as a platform molecule together with the potential for expansion into new targets and their respective antibodies. 

What is the most challenging aspect of being a founder?
To convince people about something that will work in the future 

What is something you wish you had known about being a founder?
That is a very hard job!

What is the most important lesson you have learned as a founder?
Be humble and listen to feedback. 

The Venture Leaders Biotech program is co-organized by Venturelab and Swissnex Boston and supported by Debiopharm, EPFL Lausanne, ETH Zurich, EY - Ernst & Young, Swiss Biotech Association, VISCHER, Hansjörg Wyss, and Venture Leaders alum Ulf Grawunder.