Convert Pharmaceuticals is a Belgian biotech start-up, developing a new way to treat solid tumours. Their innovation is targeting one of the biggest obstacles in oncology, tumour hypoxia – the low-oxygen zones within tumours that fuel aggressiveness and resistance to therapy.

The start-up is a member of our New Biotech Platforms market group.

The company’s CEO, Prof. Dr. Philippe Lambin, points out that many solid tumours have areas with very little oxygen, which usually makes them harder to treat. The start-up turns this issue into a therapeutic opportunity. 

“We are turning the tumour itself into a sort of factory that activates a drug designed to kill it.”

Founded in 2017, Convert Pharmaceuticals’ solution is currently in the clinical trials stage. Once it reaches the market, the impact could be massive. “Our hypothesis, based on preclinical data, is that we will be able to double the long-term survivors treated with immunotherapy.”

A new paradigm in cancer treatment

The current way of treating tumours is not particularly efficient. When you give a person cancer drugs, they spread throughout the whole body. Only less than 1% reaches the tumour, while the rest harm healthy tissue, causing toxicity. 

Convert Pharmaceuticals’ hypoxia-activated prodrugs (HAPs) work differently. 

“We have a higher drug concentration within tumours than outside the tumours, and that leads to fewer side effects and more targeted treatments,” Prof. Dr. Lambin explains.

What makes this innovation even more special is its potential to become a disease-agnostic treatment. “More than half of solid tumours of all cancers have macroscopic hypoxia. [..] So [Convert Pharmaceuticals’ solution] can be applied to different types of cancers.”

The company has started clinical trials with five patients who had no toxicity. This milestone sets it apart from many drug developers that never make it past trials on animals.

The fact that Convert Pharmaceuticals has made it this far comes as no surprise, given that Prof. Dr. Lambin is not only an oncologist with a PhD in biology and over two decades studying tumour hypoxia, but also an experienced entrepreneur with two exits under his belt.

Prof. Dr. Lambin co-founded the company alongside Paul Tulcinsky, Nicolas Geûens, Noshaq and Droia Oncology Ventures. Now, the company’s everyday operations are led together with the COO, Brice Van Eeckhout, and a team of experts in the field of tumour hypoxia.

The next big thing

As an oncologist, Prof. Dr. Lambin witnessed the rise of immunotherapy and how dramatically it changed outcomes for patients. For example, patients with metastatic melanoma, who used to survive only about six months, are now living five to seven years or more, returning to work, and resuming normal lives. That success, however, is still limited to only about 20% of patients. 

In 2018, the work on cancer immunotherapy was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. A year later, the Nobel Prize in the same category was awarded for uncovering the mechanisms by which cells sense and respond to oxygen levels. Now, the team at Convert Pharmaceuticals is combining these two award-winning discoveries to double the immunotherapy’s long-term response to hypoxia.

“Based on our preclinical models, independently validated in two laboratories, we have strong evidence to believe that this is achievable,” says Prof. Dr. Lambin.

Convert Pharmaceuticals’ treatment is approved for clinical trial in major medical centers across Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain. The first patients receiving the treatment have also shown promising results.

The pharmacokinetics – how the body absorbs, distributes, metabolizes, and eliminates the drug – of the first patient have been “amazingly good. "The drug’s half-life – the time required for its concentration in the body to decrease by 50% – is approximately six times longer than that of the previous comparable compound. Moreover, the active metabolites generated within the tumour are present only at low levels in the circulation. This is precisely the outcome we were hoping for! “This suggests that we may soon see a potential anti-cancer effect,” Prof. Dr. Lambin concludes.

Preparing to scale

Drug development is long and expensive. The company has received a grant from the EIC Accelerator and is now raising a pre-series A round. “We want to complete the dose escalation of Phase I clinical trial, generate early clinical efficacy data, and file two new patent applications,” Van Eeckhout reveals.

Convert Pharmaceuticals is proud to be accepted to the EIC Scaling Club and appreciates all the support they receive. 

“It’s a chance to share experiences with fellow members, and access expertise from experts and other entrepreneurs. [We] participate in a lot of events and foster connections. These are things we find really important.”

About the EIC Scaling Club

The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.

The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.

The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.

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