Metastasis: Cancer’s Greatest Threat And Weakest Link – A Conversation With The Founder Of Mestastop Solutions, Dr. Arnab Roy Chowdhury

This is a conversation with the founder of Mestastop Solutions, Dr. Arnab Roy Chowdhury. Mestastop is a startup biotech based in Bengaluru that is working on therapeutics to delay the spread of primary cancer to other body parts, a process called metastasis.

Arnab is a biochemist by training, with post-doctoral background from Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical School and has worked with big Pharma like GSK and Amgen.

Congratulations on the GHP awards. Why did you choose to work on metastasis? How did this idea come?

As part of a previous role where I was programme leader for a CRO working with big pharma, I realized an evolutionary disease like cancer needs to be targeted at its weakest, giving the tumour a minimal chance to select for the surviving mutants. That brought me to metastasis, which is a paradox, as the biggest killer of cancer was its weakest link. Looking around, I could see all discovery attempts at metastasis had failed in the clinic, so it was important to understand the biology of metastasis from the patient's perspective before we tried any discovery attempts.

When did you start, and how easy or hard has the journey been?

I quit my job in 2017 and registered Mestastop in September 2018. It was hard to find funding; I had to sell my house to partially fund my dream. I found some other dreamers in my school friends Abhijit Sarkar and Praveen Agarwal. Then, I met Dr Ajith Kamath, who pitched in, and we started the wet lab in December 2019. The journey was not easy, understandably. Good science is all about data; it takes time to generate it, so convincing takes some time. For example, when I first presented to BIRAC for a grant, I was laughed at in 2019 as the idea was too bold and ambitious, and I had no data to back myself up. Today, we have been awarded multiple grants by BIRAC, the last being 2.66 Crores, because our science is now doing the talking.

Tell us something about your team.

Dr John Ellingboe, a medicinal chemist with 35 years of experience in Big pharma like Wyeth and Pfizer, heads our drug discovery team. John is based in New York and has been associated with us since our inception. The team in India consists of 17 people, with 7 Phds from reputed institutes like IISC, Bangalore, and IITs and 7 MScs, with extensive experience, from the top CROs in India. We also have two senior business executives in part-time roles based out of Boston and Basel.

Are grants good enough for you? Biotech is expensive because of the infrastructure required, isn't it?

Unfortunately, grants are not good enough to sustain the quality and momentum of our science. Besides, instruments are expensive. Thanks to the government, we have multiple incubators in place to start building our proof of concept today. We have incubated out of IKP Eden and Bangalore Bioinnovation Centre and aim to build our infrastructure now, as our business model is B2B outlicensing, which would require a standalone facility for IP protection.

What has been your business model to date? How have you sustained your research?

We consciously avoided being a service-oriented company and have been lucky to find angel investors who were okay with biotechs' long gestation period. We are still pre-revenue but foresee our first outlicensing deal in the next two years, so we are almost there.

So, has fundraising not been a problem for Mestastop?

It depends on how I look at it. The glass is always half full or empty. As a diaspora, we do not have success stories in drug discovery, so obviously, VCs are sceptics. They would prefer some external validation, e.g., a client or FDA approval. But then, for that to happen, I would require millions to hire a Chief Business Officer in the United States and apply for FDA IND, a chicken or egg story.

Recently, there has been much talk about deep tech not being pursued in India. What are your views on that, being a deep tech?

I cannot speak for others; it is not my place. There is too much opinion out there. It is not easy to do deep tech in India, but we knew that before we started and intend to change that notion. Recently, somebody asked me how I would change that, and my answer was, "I am still trying to figure it out, but I believe we can, and we will." Self-belief is important.

How soon do you think your innovation can reach patients?

We have two strategies: one novel discovery and the other drug repurposing. We intend to start two back-to-back drug repurposing clinical trials in India, so it will start reaching patients by the end of this year. However, the novel discovery will take longer, and our intention is to out-license it to pharma, who will take it forward.

But outlicensing will make it costly for Indian patients, something you were against?

You are correct. We have a responsibility to our patients in India, and that is why we are focusing on repurposing in India. But we also have a responsibility to our shareholders, and we need to generate revenue. We are looking to exploit the West's in-licensing appetite initially. We may progress our molecule independently two or three deals down the line. That's the goal.

Lastly, are there any final comments for our readers?

Only one, we are working hard and sincerely, and we will keep doing that. Wish us luck.

Thank you.