Onena Medicines joins BaseLaunch Portfolio

We are excited to welcome Onena Medicines as our newest portfolio company!

Onena Medicines is a Swiss-Spanish biotech company emerging from the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub and Stanford University around research performed by the two founders, Maider Zabala and Neethan Lobo. They uncovered a new class of druggable secreted growth factors that reprogram diseased cells to grow uncontrollably. Blocking them reactivates powerful physiological maturation signals resulting in permanently disabled cell growth. Onena – with initial funding from the Fundacion Biozientziak Fundazioa in Gipuzkoa as well as several other regional and national grants – has built a proprietary target validation and AI-centric antibody drug discovery platform to rapidly create a pipeline of novel targets and antibodies focused on oncology – and later also rare disease – applications. With their lead antibody program targeting LEFTY1/2, they have demonstrated broad efficacy against breast, colorectal and brain cancers without observable toxicities in preclinical models.

Over the last few months, Onena and the team at Baselaunch have worked intensively to further build-out the company and to expand the management team with the additions of Pascal Longchamp to the Board and Michel Janicot as their CDO. These new additions, both long term industry veterans with proven track records in drug discovery and corporate development, will help Onena to further progress its pipeline of innovative therapeutics toward the clinic.