Support Women Scientist-Entrepreneurs in Celebration of the Women’s Equality Day

Join us on Thursday, September 24, at the AIM-HI Women’s Venture Competition Award Ceremony as we celebrate 8 leading-edge women entrepreneurs, each on the cusp of developing innovative therapies and diagnostics for all cancer types. The AIM-HI Accelerator Fund Women’s Venture Competition is a first-of-its-kind initiative that provides funding, coaching and networking opportunities to women-led oncology start-ups.

Make sure you don’t miss the excitement as we announce the top two finalists from our pool of 8 amazing semi-finalists. It is sure to be game-changing for the participating women-led oncology technology businesses, as well as the future of cancer research. The winner will receive an equity investment of $300,000 from AIM-HI as seed money for proof of concept and proof of value on the path to clinical trials and, eventually, to new effective therapeutics and diagnostics that could save patients’ lives.

REGISTER NOW for this FREE fun event and hear all about these aspiring female scientist-entrepreneurs in the oncology arena.

Ready to do more? AIM-HI has the resources to fund only one of the finalists. But we’d like to support both! DONATE NOW and help us raise an additional $300,000 to fund both finalists and double the impact for women entrepreneur-scientists who are creating life-saving oncology innovations!

Please join us on September 24! Invite your network and, together, we can all cheer on these inspiring women scientist-entrepreneurs!

AIM-HI recorganized the winners of the 2023 Women’s Venture Competition, awarding the first prize to Sarah Hein, Ph.D. (March Biosciences) and runner-up to Lily Zou, Ph.D., MBA (Degron Therapeutics).

March Biosciences has developed a CD5 CAR T-cell therapy for T-cell lymphoma (TCL) and T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL). By genetically modifying T-cells using lentiviral transduction to express chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) targeting the CD-5 antigen, these cells will then be infused back into the patient to target cancer cells in the blood. March Biosciences’ lead asset MB-105 is currently in Phase I trials and has demonstrated to be safe, with promising efficacy data. The Phase II study is expected to begin in the first half of 2024, offering hope for those patients suffering from these deadly hematological cancers.

Degron Therapeutics has designed and synthesized a unique molecular glue degrader (MGD) compound library compound library, known as the GlueXplorer platform. It uses its platform in combination with phenotypic screening, proteomic screening, and AI to accelerate the development of novel drugs for previously undruggable targets in oncology which gives more hope to develop promising new therapies.

In a panel moderated by Dr. Matt Tremblay, AIM-HI Chair of the Board and CEO of Blackbird Laboratories, five early-stage companies that we have recognized and supported (DotBio, Concarlo Therapeutics, Window Therapeutics, Arbele Bio, ManaTBio) presented their innovative cancer technologies, shared their challenges, and discussed desired areas for partnering to find new solutions for cancer patients.

Dr. Sujuan Ba invited aspiring entrepreneurs with innovative ideas and young oncology companies to connect with AIM-HI for support and guidance. She acknowledged the dedicated individuals and advisers who have been instrumental in bridging the gap between cancer research and patient care, and emphasized that together, we can make a difference for cancer patients.

This content-rich event also included a keynote address by Dr. James P. Allison, 2018 Nobel Prize Laureate and 2014 Szent Györgyi Prize winner, followed by three scientific panel discussions in the morning New Frontiers for Cancer Research session, and an evening Award Ceremony honoring Dr. Isaac P. Witz for the 2023 Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research. Click here to read the full event recap.