July 2020
THE OCR REPORT
A Message from Jon
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While plans are being made (and then re-made) to get “back to normal,” we remain focused on supporting innovation that will impact society. This week we announced the 2020 Blavatnik Award recipients. One award winner, for instance, is using his funding to launch a human clinical trial for a new drug with possible COVID-19 response applications. Thanks to the continued generosity and support of the Blavatnik Family Foundation, $2.6M was awarded to 13 Yale innovators, making this the biggest year in the Fund’s history. As we kick off the 5th year of the Fund, we will be hosting the first-ever Blavatnik Showcase virtual event in September. Along with support from Demy-Colton, the Showcase will explore where several past award winners are with their projects, introduce the latest 2021 Blavatnik Awardees, and will feature breakout sessions. Please do hold the date: Thursday, September 17.

We look forward to celebrating impactful innovation.
Jon Soderstrom
Managing Director
Yale Office of Cooperative Research
What's coming up
Blavatnik Showcase
Join us as we kick off the 5th year of the Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale . Along with support from Demy-Colton , this webinar will explore where several past award recipients winners are with their projects, and you will also have the chance to meet the latest 2021 Blavatnik Awardees.  
 
More details to follow. 
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Our News
Cybrexa and Wellinks Named Winners of a CT Venture Award
Gain Real-World Entrepreneurial Skills! Applications now open for Blavatnik Associate, Canaan-Yale Fellows, Yale Accelerator Fellows, and Technology Commercialization Fellows programs for 2020-21.
Blavatnik Fellowship in Life Science Entrepreneurship
2020-21 Cohorts Announced
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News We're Following
101 College Wins Final City Sign-0ff
Inozyme Pharma Acquires ENPP1 Deficiency Program Assets from Alexion Pharmaceuticals
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Simcha debuts with $25M to advance custom-built IL-18 for cancer
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Cybrexa Therapeutics completes successful pre-ind meeting with fda for cbx-12 (alphalextm-exatecan), a novel treatment for solid tumors
Inozyme Pharma Announces Pricing of Initial Public Offering
Kleo COVID drug gets $5M boost from Gates Foundation
Arvinas Appoints Wendy Dixon, Ph.D., to its Board of Directors
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Current, state-wide industry news.
Faculty Spotlight
Sidi Chen, PhD

Associate Professor
Sidi is a 2020 Blavatnik Award winner.

Overview of your current project

We will use his award towards early and transitional development for our project “MAEGI Medicine, a new paradigm of immune gene therapy". Unlike all existing immunotherapy such as checkpoint blockade, cell therapy, cancer vaccine, oncolytic virus or broadly acting recombinant proteins, MAEGI is based on direct multiplexed activation of endogenous genes. While MAEGI showed strong pre-clinical efficacy as a single agent, its distinct molecular mechanism of action provides an orthogonal approach to combo with various other modalities. This project will perform optimization of an off-the-shelf version of MAEGI, further validate its efficacy and test its potential toxicity, in order to bridge the current develop to the advanced stage of pre-IND.
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Favorite Off-Time Activity
I enjoy playing tennis and I love music.
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Best Advice for Young Innovators
I’m probably not in a position to “give advice to young innovators” as I’m a starter myself. But I find it positive to be creative, persistent and innovative. 
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