Lime Tx: Shardule Shah (CEO) and Prakrit Jena (CTO)
Lime Tx: Shardule Shah (CEO) and Prakrit Jena (CTO)
"We are so excited about the potential of what we can discover."
Human progress depends on our species’ singular, and perhaps mundane, ability to make accurate measurements.
Without the requisite tools, hypotheses cannot be tested, nor new biology uncovered. Take the case of the lysosome. Human genetics, biochemical analysis and microscopic imaging have provided circumstantial evidence that dysregulated lysosomal function is linked to conditions like cancer, neurodegeneration and obesity. “Lysosomes are very important in cell biology—not just a microscopic garbage bag,” explains Prakrit Jena, co-founder and CTO of Lime Therapeutics.
Lipids can mediate a range of activities in cells, and slight alterations in their localization can have devastating consequences. Mutations in the GBA1 gene leads to lysosomal accumulation of lipid substrates—ceramides and sphingolipids—and development of Parkinson’s or Gaucher’s disease. In this context, drugs that could restore normal lipid biology would have the potential to help patients. But how can we find these types of therapies? What tools exist to measure changes in lipid content, and quantitatively assess how prospective drugs affect this delicate biology?
“The hallmark of Lime is the platform technology that we have developed to measure lipid flux in a manner that no one else can. By doing this kind of novel measurement, we can create an entirely new class of therapies,” explains Shardule Shah, co-founder and CEO of Lime Therapeutics.
Born out of technology created by Prakrit Jena and Dan Heller in Heller’s Cancer Nanomedicine Lab at Sloan Kettering, Lime’s platform uses nanotubes that emit signals based on the surrounding lipid milieu: “We engineered a nanomaterial that goes into cells via endocytosis and ends up in the lysosomes. It gives out infrared light, but the color of the light changes based on the amount of lipids around the sensor,” explains Jena.
Working in Heller’s lab, Jena custom built the sensor, plate reader, and analysis software from scratch—soon other labs, biotechs, and big pharmas were clamoring for access to the new technology. After teaming up with Shardule Shah (a former scientist turned MBA student at HBS), they realized that many options were open to their fledgling venture: “there are multiple avenues for success scientifically and commercially. We can take the platform, make breakthrough measurements, and then start or partner with programs…this was not only a great technology, but we had the ability to be both a platform and asset company,” explains Shah.
Li(pid)me(diated) Therapeutics was co-founded in 2021. The team has raised a seed round of $3.1M with support from Jolt VC, Coho Deeptech VC, and angel participation from Kent Johnson (former BioLegend CFO) and Inaki Berenguer (Managing Partner, Life Extension Ventures). They also nabbed a prestigious "Golden Ticket” from Bristol Meyers Squibb and $100K in XSeed funding from Deerfield.
Shah and Jena are driven to exploit lipid-mediation to bring novel therapies to patients. Along the way they hope to make some cool discoveries: “we are so excited about the potential of what we can discover, and the lipid biology we can uncover, at Lime.”
Below is an interview with Shardule Shah, PhD MBA (CEO) and Prakrit Jena, PhD (CTO) of Lime Therapeutics, from May 2023:
1. Briefly describe your background, and the moment you decided to jump from academia into industry entrepreneurship? What different paths did you consider, and what was the deciding factor to make the transition?
Shardule: Even before starting my PhD, I knew that an academic route was not the right career for me. I had long been fascinated by the intersection of biology and business, or in other words, what it takes to bring medicines to patients.
However, I didn't have a defined career idea [during this time]—I was considering consulting, going into biotech companies, even patent law. All of these areas seemed open to me. Ultimately, I decided that I wanted to get more of the entrepreneurial experience. That’s why I joined a small company right out of my PhD, called Diassess, later renamed to Lucira Health.
That experience allowed me to understand small teams at a “Series A” startup [at the time], and get a feel for what it was like to get something off the ground. That was really the pivotal point when I knew that I was in the right area. I loved working with scientists, engineers, and executives to get a medical innovation into the hands of patients. I knew that there was no turning back and that I wanted to, one day, start my own company.
[Was your PhD mentor supportive?]
I told my faculty mentor, Larry Boise, very early on that I was interested in the business of biotech. I cannot overstate how helpful he has been and continues to be in that journey. I had this innate desire to make a difference by helping to get medicines to patients. At the beginning of my doctoral training, even more than the specific subject matter area, it was about finding the right mentor who would understand my career vision and guide me accordingly. To this day, Larry remains a trusted personal advisor and someone I can go to ‘gut check’ an idea. As a Boston sports homer, it also gives me ample opportunity to needle him about his beloved Philadelphia sports teams.
Prakrit: I was always interested in math and physics, and trying to figure things out. My PhD lab, led by Taekjip Ha, was a single molecule biophysics lab at the University of Illinois [Urbana-Champaign]. The focus of Dr. Ha’s lab was to develop imaging tools to make measurements in biology that were impossible at the time. I realized that I really liked being able to do things that other people couldn’t, e.g., measurements or analysis that for technical reasons had not been done before. It really was just a creative intellectual challenge. I enjoyed solving these kinds of problems including figuring out optics, analysis methods etc.
When I finished my PhD, my good friend Dan Heller, who was a postdoc in Bob Langer’s lab at MIT, had just accepted an offer from Sloan Kettering as one of its first engineers. He suggested that I join him in New York and help start a cancer nanomedicine laboratory. The idea was: “you're an engineer, you like building instruments and tools. If you do it in a hospital setting, it could be something translational and useful.” Once I was at Sloan Kettering it became so clear that there are many different kinds of important problems to focus on. There were translational scientists and physicians all around us who were much more patient-focused than what I was used to from a purely academic setting. It wasn't just about getting a paper or showing how smart you are, but trying to make something potentially useful to patients.
There, I was fortunate to develop the first iteration of our lipid-sensing platform. As we published our work, presented it at conferences etc., Dan and I realized that many people in industry and pharma wanted to use it. After seeing this overwhelming response, we went back to Bob Langer and asked: “what should we do with this?” He said: “you are physicists and engineers and should be making products, not just papers.” That made complete sense to me, and I realize what seems obvious in hindsight: This lipid-sensing platform may or may not be game changing; but if I didn't commit fully to taking it forward nothing would happen.
2. What is one book that has influenced the way you think, which you would recommend to fellow scientists or entrepreneurs?
Shardule: Recently, I have read, “The Code Breaker” by Walter Isaacson, which is a phenomenal overview of Jennifer Doudna’s amazing CRISPR discovery story and potential ethical implications. The relatable part (though obviously CRISPR is a Nobel-winning idea and we are just getting started) was how to translate a discovery whose potential wasn’t even scratched and turn it into something that can potentially help patients. In addition, I have read, “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz, a book that had me nodding my head and saying, “Yep…yep” each time I came across a relatable example that Horowitz put forth about building something from scratch.
But the example I wanted to put down here is a children’s book, one that I first read when I was seven years old and just re-read with my six year old daughter. “Charlotte’s Web” by E.B. White is more than just a story of a pig being saved from the slaughterhouse (spoiler alert!) I am happy to be accused here of looking too much into things, or peddling a children’s book in what is an otherwise serious interview about building a biotech, but to me, “Charlotte’s Web” is about the resourcefulness of someone (Wilbur the pig) who was doing the unimaginable and who, brick by brick, built an indomitable system in place to allow him to survive. He did it with a combination of remaining humble and hungry, two qualities I do my best to emulate, as a CEO/founder, and also as a husband/dad.
Prakrit: When I was young, about 12 or 13, I read a book called: “Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman.” Richard Feynman was a physicist, who was curious about absolutely everything. Essentially, his whole life unfolded from that guiding principle. I've read the book multiple times, and it influenced how I think about things. I realized that while I found physics interesting, that same enjoyment of trying to solve a problem applied to biology, drug discovery, and the business aspects of building a biotech. If you think about almost anything deeply enough, it becomes interesting—the complex variations, frameworks you can apply…I'm just genuinely curious about many aspects beyond the science: how do you convince people to care about your company with storytelling? What will the patent landscape look like? These things are all quite interesting to me,, there's almost nothing that I think is boring.
3. What is the elevator pitch for Lime? What is the company’s origin story and how has the vision changed or stayed the same since the company’s inception?
Shardule: Lime is revolutionizing the field of lipidomics in a manner that has already been done for genomics and proteomics. Diseases of dysfunctional lipid biology effect the entire human body but never before has there been a technology to screen for potential drug candidates that an correct abnormal lipid processing. We are using our breakthrough screening technology to create precision medicines for lipid-mediated targets in a broad range of diseases: cancer, neurodegenerative disorders and metabolic diseases. These lipid-mediating treatments can work alongside current treatments to improve the longevity of humans. This is what we're really excited about at Lime.
[Shardule on origin story]:
Lime’s story is the epitome of random chance sometimes leading to good things. Between the fall and spring semester of my first year at business school at HBS, I was sitting around at home with my wife and kids, enjoying winter break. I happened to be scrolling through the HBS Healthcare WhatsApp group, and a friend of mine, another HBS student, was advertising an event called Frequency Bio run by Pillar VC and Petri in Boston. The gathering was billed as a way for budding entrepreneurs to get together and to meet. I thought this was extremely cool, but I didn't have a defined idea for my own company. I did not patent anything out of my PhD work. I knew that I was good at building teams, motivating people, and getting ideas moving, but I was not necessarily the one to develop the initial idea. So I joined the Frequency program, which took place over Slack and Zoom, because this was the height of the COVID Delta variant.
I kept hearing from a lot of different people that I really needed to talk to Prakrit. Because these other individuals who had talked to him were really impressed by his technology. So as the program was officially ending, I sent him an email saying: “Hey, let's try and meet because I’ve heard a lot about you.”
We had a Zoom where he introduced me to the idea of this lipid sensor that he and Dan Heller had developed. While I thought that this was a revolutionary technology, at that point I did not have enough of a fundamental understanding to assess the translational relevance. So, I took this idea back to my PhD mentor, Larry. Larry said that this seems very innovative and credible. So that was part of the initial technical de-risking.
Throughout the early part of 2021, Prakrit and I then spent hours and hours on Zoom calls getting to know each other as budding professionals, entrepreneurs, scientists but most importantly, as people. It was very much a ‘Zoom dating’ process. It so happens that Prakrit and I are in a similar stage of life, where we both have young children. We have a similar understanding of what we feel is important in life.
While we have a similar mentality in that respect, we are very different people with different skillsets—this complementarity is what I enjoy about working with him. What “sealed the deal” was when Prakrit came to meet me in May of 2021. I invited him to stay with me and my family – not put him up in a nearby hotel. He fit right in and it was like having another family member come stay with us. Over the course of three days, we sat together in a room in Harvard Business School and did the very stereotypical startup thing: markerboard lots of ideas non-stop, and try to figure out if we had something real. In the evenings he got to meet my family, and we went for what I would call “romantic long walks” along Newbury Street and other areas of Boston. Towards the end of that meeting, it was becoming clear to both of us that this is something we needed to work on together. So that is really Lime’s genesis story.
Prakrit: Weill Cornell and Sloan Kettering had a program called Accelerating BioVenture Initiatives (ABI), where you build a business plan around the company idea. The concept of Lime, as a potential new company idea, emerged at the end of that program. I knew I wanted to take Lime forward, and I needed a co-founder with all of the company building and business skills that I didn’t have. One of my team members, Michael Retchin, told me about the Frequency program at Pillar/Petri, and suggested that it could be a great way to meet a potential co-founder . As Shardule said, we didn't actually end up meeting through the program but enough people suggested to me that I should meet him, which I did. I was impressed with his thought process – he had me present my platform technology to him, and then to Larry Boise, his PhD advisor, to see if the concept fundamentally made sense. To me, this is what a rational critical thinker would do, and it made me realize he could be a great co-founder.
We got along really well from the very beginning—there was never any sort of friction or issues. We worked a lot with Zoom because of the pandemic, and maybe that helped – we had to communicate well, clearly state exactly what we were thinking and why, and clarify things over emails. I think clear logical rationale for our decision making is one of our biggest strengths now.
After the ABI program, I did a biomedicine-focused NSF I-Corp program run by the Weill Cornell Medicine team. I essentially interviewed 25 experts in lipid metabolism to stress the idea of this new platform by asking: Does it make sense to start a company based on a new platform to monitor lipids? Because of the pandemic and everyone being on Zoom, I could interview people from all over the country relatively easily. It was unanimous to all of these scientists and clinicians that: Of course lipids are highly relevant to so many diseases but there have just been so many technical hurdles. Until now [at Lime] there has not been a way to study lipids systematically.
4. Key “go” moments early on when you were whiteboarding the ideas at HBS?
Shardule: The unanswered question at that time was around disease indication, or more broadly speaking, the best use case for this technology. The paradigm that many biotech companies go through is the “platform versus asset” internal debate. When we were whiteboarding it became relatively clear that we can do both. To me that was really one of the points where I thought: “there are multiple avenues for success scientifically and commercially.” We can take the platform make breakthrough measurements, and then start or partner programs. Bob Langer was recommending for us to take these measurements and do some drug discovery on our own. So for me the “go” moment was the realization that this was not only a great technology, but we had the ability to be both a platform and asset company.
Prakrit: It became clear that our technology was the only way to measure lipids in high-throughput in live cells, or in live animals. An actually uncharted space. So in the universe of possibilities, there really was nothing that is off the table—do we want to be a research tool company or screening as a service, or help with structure activity relationship for certain targets? These options were all possible. That was quite exciting to realize that the sky is really the limit if we chose the right set of problems.
5. Briefly, how does the LipidSense platform work? What are the strengths of this platform and what are its limitations?
Prakrit: Dan Heller leads the cancer nanomedicine lab at MSKCC, where they use nanoparticles to deliver drugs and carbon nanotubes to make sensors. We could have focused on making sensors for many biomolecules: but the translational physicians and scientists working around us at Sloan Kettering kept telling us that lipids are really hard to study. They wanted us to focus on lipids. But at the same time, there are 200,000 kinds of lipids, everywhere inside the cell. Even if we wanted to look at lipids, where should we look?
In parallel, a lot of emerging biology had shown that lysosomes are very important in cell biology—much more than the older narrative that lysosomes are just the garbage disposal system. Many lipid processes go through the lysosomes. If you could accurately monitor lipids in the lysosomes, it may be the most useful starting point for doing lipid biology. So, we engineered a nanomaterial that goes into cells via endocytosis and ends up in the lysosomes. It gives out infrared light, and the color of the light changes based on the amount of lipids around the sensor. That really is our core invention: an engineered nanoparticle that goes to the lysosomes, and emits light at a wavelength dependent on the amount of lipids around the nanoparticle.
The nanosensor mechanism is very robust. We add it to standard cell culture media, where it gets coated by serum proteins – so the cell just sees a blob of biological molecules. Cells take these up primarily via micropinocytosis, and the nanosensor remains in the endolysosomal pathway till it eventually resides within the inner volume of the lysosomes. We have tested the sensor in over 50 cell lines and several animal models, and it works in all of them: as long as endocytosis is taking place the sensor gets taken up, and as long as the lipid content changes, the emission color changes.
[What are some of the limitations?]
Prakrit: The nanomaterial gives out infrared light, and tissues are essentially transparent in the infrared region. We can shine a laser at the sensors within the body of a mouse and collect signal from the outside, non-invasively. But working in the near-infrared spectrum meant that most commercially available biological instruments couldn’t be used for our applications. We initially had to build our own microscope and well plate reader. We used to joke that it was the largest, most expensive - $300,000 - well-plate reader in the world. We worked with a Canadian optics company, Photon etc, to help develop our own animal imager and a portable measurement device. The kind of analysis packages we needed for this kind of data didn’t exist. I had to write a lot of code to handle all the novel data we were generating. To me, that was the technical challenge: the sensor, the instruments, the programs, all were new but had to work correctly. But on the upside, I know the entire LipidSense platform inside out. And now multiple people in Dan’s lab have used the sensor, published many papers, validated it in many disease areas etc.
Shardule: One additional challenge that we are working on is that while this is such a breakthrough with regard to quantification of lysosomal lipid flux, we cannot currently distinguish between lipid families. But this is something that we are actively working on right now. I consider this as a limitation, though we are able look at lysosomal lipid flux in great detail. If we want to further distinguish various kinds of lipids, we can use traditional lipidomics approaches or mass spec to complement findings with our technology.
Key Papers:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aar2680
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsnano.7b04743
6. Did your lead candidate come from a LipidSense platform screen? How was this screen performed? What made you select NSCLC as a lead indication?
Prakrit: In Dan Heller’s lab, a graduate student started using the lipid sensor to explore the altered lipid metabolism in many kind of cancers, and discovered that a subset of cancers that had a lot of lysosomal lipid buildup. Using our platform, it was technically easy to run a small phenotypic screen – identify which small molecules removed the excess lipid buildup in these cancer cells, without affect the lysosomal lipid content in control cells. We identified a novel target that mediated this lipid buildup, and inhibiting the target caused a specific form of cell death. Then another graduate student started doing work to figure out the mechanism of action, and Lime funded some of the work in Dan’s lab under a sponsored research agreement. As it was a small molecule screen, we ended up with a novel target, a mechanism of action, a small molecule inhibitor which in this case also worked in vivo. We want to repeat this again and again: start with these therapeutic hypotheses about lipids building up in a given disease, then do genetic and small molecule screens to find novel targets.
Shardule: You're question premise was: is this a high throughput screen initially? The interesting thing is that so much biology was done before the first screen in the Heller lab, that it was simply a very small library. Prakrit and the team at Sloan Kettering actually started with a 20 molecule library. So they were able to find multiple hits within a very small library. This gives us the knowledge that we can have a very strong hit rate, if we do the proper biology beforehand. So even though we do have the capability to do high throughput screening, the initial work was done actually more through rote biology, and validation with our platform. This gives us confidence that when we do ramp up and conduct these high throughput screens, we are going to uncover a lot of what I would call this “hidden treasure.”
[Are you focused on KRAS cancers? Is there a special link between this oncogene and lipid content?]
Shardule: I'll start with the broad picture. So while the initial work was done in a KRAS model, we eventually came to the understanding that many of the mechanisms that we are trying to pursue are actually RAS independent. The story has evolved since the beginning: there was initial focus on KRAS cell lines but we have expanded the biological context through which lipids have an effect in cancer cell biology and neuro or metabolic disorders. We are very excited to see how this story evolves over time.
Prakrit: There are potentially some easy wins in the lipid-mediated target space, and we can test this in a high throughput fashion. We can experimentally determine which of these hypotheses [about lipids and disease] have some value and are worth pursuing. We have talked to lots of labs, including Craig Thomson’s at Sloan Kettering. They gave us a list of potential hypotheses, where there is a clear clinical link between lipids and cancer, and a strong body of biology literature showing lipid abnormalities. Are goal is to connect the dots and identify potential therapeutic opportunities.
7. What excites you most about working at Lime? Briefly, what is the magic sauce or competitive advantage?
Shardule: What excites me is the idea that we truly have the power in our hands to make breakthrough discoveries. From the moment I get up, I think about what I can do to enable these discoveries…whether it is helping Prakrit with something more on the technological side, or strengthening the business position of the company. Fundamentally when I get up every morning, I am always excited. My wife knows that I get up thinking about the company and I go to sleep thinking about the company. This is simply because we are so excited about the potential of what we can discover and the biology we can uncover. There is a level of excitement, energy, adrenaline that remains over a year into founding Lime.
Prakrit: I think our industry has done a really good job in figuring out tools to validate targets, test them in vivo, to develop biomarkers, optimize medicinal chemistry, efficient design strategies, and of course the way AI/ML can accelerate each of these steps. All of the machinery is in place. We're fortunate that we are the first step identifying novel targets. Because when we do identify these targets there's such a streamlined, efficient path to pushing these programs forward. It’s almost like a cheat code to be at this first step with a new enabling technology.
8. What is another biotech (public or private) that you think serves as a paragon of an impactful company? What are the key learnings from this case study?
Prakrit: From my perspective it’s been Agios, founded by Craig Thompson, Lew Cantley, and Tak Mak. Once we started getting advice from Craig and Lew about Lime, they were saying that Agios started in a similar way as a platform for cancer metabolism. They found a target—IDH1—and were laser focused in understanding exactly where that target had the most potential clinical impact, and how those patients would be selected. They called it correctly and had, from what I remember, one of the fastest FDA approvals ever for a new company. For me, the key learning is how the leadership team at Agios commited to letting the data guide them all the way through. At Lime, I hope we can be just as disciplined in terms of letting the data light the path forward from the novel hits from our platform to developing a drug for an unmet clinical need.
Shardule: I agree with Agios, but I’ll also provide another example. I am biased since I am currently writing an HBS case study on them, but Alnylam Pharmaceuticals comes to mind. The broad parallel is there – how you do harness a breakthrough technology to bring medicines to patients? Having had the pleasure of speaking extensively with founding CEO John Maraganore about his journey, I think the lessons of remaining data-driven at all times and agile in terms of company building are two of the key lessons I take away from Alnylam. It took them about 16 years from the company’s inception to get a therapy approved by FDA, but the lessons they learned to get there--and which John has shared in a 2022 Nature Biotechnology article and on Biomarker—are ones that can apply to any biotech company, large or small.
9. In today’s climate what is one short piece of advice you would give to prospective biotech entrepreneurs?
Shardule: There is never a bad time to try an idea that you fundamentally believe in. If you try to time your life against the whims of the market, then you’re going to come up against factors that are just completely out of your control. If you have an idea that really resonates with you, and you have gone through the pressure testing with other VCs, academics or pharma companies…well then there really is not a bad time to go for it. My second piece of advice alludes to your earlier suggestion about raising funding in these tighter markets. I would say that at the risk of overgeneralization: take the cash to keep your company going. There might be a lot of overemphasis on dilution at a particular round, or setting the correct cap on a convertible note. But at the end of the day, if your cash runs out to zero, then your company is worth zero. Be scrappy, look to angel networks, strategic partners, non-dilutive funding…money is out there still.
Prakrit: Coming from academia, I have been trying to make sense of the business of biotech. A model that I have seen is that a biotech’s job, fundamentally, is to take VC and investor money and get to a pharma acquisition. That is different from making a scientific discovery and going step by step essentially independent of any of these realities: what is currently a hot investment thesis, what is pharma looking to acquire, how is the economy, where is the market? These issues are so much broader in scope than just the underlying science. This is different the world we inhabit in an academic research setting. Lipid metabolism matters in disease—this scientific fact doesn’t change based on any of these factors, but a company is very different. A piece of advice I received was, “Companies die when they start doing science.” Our goal is to develop a drug, and that has to be our guiding principle.
10. What has most impressed you about any experienced or thoughtful investors with which you have interacted? What is one piece of advice you would give to new biotech investors?
Shardule: From my perspective the bar is not high for any VC, let alone a new investor, to be thought of positively in the minds of entrepreneurs. It takes basic communication skills to clear the bar. With respect to pursuing an investment in a company, if you have been communicating with them through email, in-person, Zoom or another medium, and the investor is not interested, then they can should tell you. What is not acceptable in my eyes, and we have had this happen to us, is the concept of “ghosting.” We value VC time, I hope that they value our time. If we spend our time telling you our story, please respect that and at least give us the understanding of why you're no longer interested. My advice to boil it down: just be human and be kind. We are used to hearing: “No.” That is fine and that's part of the game. But if you take a meeting and subsequently do not respond, and drop off the face of the planet, it leaves a very negative impression. That is one bucket of things.
I don't want to paint this as all doom and gloom. Everyone hears “no” from investors. But it does mean a lot even when they say “no,” for them to subsequently reach out and say: “Hey, I was just thinking about you all, and thought that this other group might be a good fit for you.” I don't care if that group is actually a fit or not. But the fact that that individual was thinking about me and my company is great. It actually makes it more likely for me as a founder to recommend that VC to other companies, even though they passed on us. It boils down to basic human decency, in my opinion, and doing the work.
Prakrit: It has been helpful that certain investors – generally experienced senior partners from blue-chip biotech VCs - can see both short and long-term patterns; they can see that Lime is a unique platform, but the concept of an enabling technology being applied to discovery new targets isn't unique. There have been technologies in the past, and they'll often give really helpful advice about something in the future—a point that we haven’t reached yet or sometimes even thought about. Three years down the line, what problems will we run into? Often, thinking about those problems will shape our current direction, and that ends up being very helpful. VCs are most helpful and well positioned to “see the future,” based on patterns from older companies. Communicating this “future” to us is very critical.
11. Any recent announcements (hires, abstracts/publications, awards, job openings) or key milestones regarding Lime that you want the public to be aware of?
Shardule: Here are a couple of things we would love to highlight:
-We are on the tail end of a seed raise, of which we will announce more details shortly, but we have raised capital from a broad syndicate of investors (some of whom are described above). It will allow us to execute on the milestones needed to raise a substantial Series A round in 2024.
-We are very excited about our recent hire, Dr. Mariluz Soula. Mariluz comes from the lab of Dr. Kivanc Birsoy at Rockefeller and is leading our target validation efforts for targets that roll off of our platform.
-Lime will be presenting at the BIO Investor Forum in October in San Francisco. If anyone reading this will be there, we are happy to connect.
-We do have an opening for an individual who would be open to working with us on our platform technology in the lab of a collaborator at the University of Rhode Island (in Kingston, RI) for the period of approximately one year. This is a technician / associate level hire, and we are specifically for someone with a strong work ethic and a bachelor’s degree in engineering, nanomaterials, polymer chemistry, or the life sciences. We are in the beginning stages of this job opportunity, but if interested, please reach out to careers@limetherapeutics.com.