Brilliant biotechnology

Scott Salka is CEO of Ambit Biosciences, a privately-held biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of small-molecule kinase inhibitors for the treatment of cancer. Founded in 2000, Ambit is Salka’s fourth start-up company and has raised about $56million.

NGP. How did you get involved in the biotech industry?

SS. I got involved in the early 90’s when there was a lot of excitement about the genome and understanding how genes impact disease. I was very attracted to the promise of the industry. Without question the biotech industry has delivered on that promise. Just look at the track record of the biotechnology sector since it origins in the late 1970s; companies like Amgen have bought very important products to market and biotech pipelines are very rich. And now the biotech industry is reaching the point where the number of clinical products will be larger than what traditional pharmaceutical companies produce.

NGP. Ambit Biosciences utilizes a proprietary platform technology, KinomeScan, to quickly and efficiently screen small molecule compounds. What does this mean?

SS. Our technology targets a type of enzyme called a kinase. There are 518 human protein kinases in the body, and they are responsible for adding or taking away phosphate groups from proteins. Kinases are extremely important in cellular communication and are essential in relaying signals from outside the cell into the cell. Each kinase has an active site, and certain small molecule drugs can nestle into the site to inhibit the kinase’s activity. Structurally, each active site “looks” similar to any other active site; therefore it can be difficult to produce a drug that is specific for a particular kinase. Ambit’s technology allows us to screen a broad set of kinases against potential drug compounds, giving us the ability to produce and choose the most selective compounds to bring into clinical trials.

About five years ago the FDA approved the first kinase inhibitor to treat a particular form of leukemia. That particular drug proved to be a revolutionary way to treat cancer, and now sells over $2 billion a year. There are five other kinase inhibitors that have been approved since then and around 50 kinase inhibitors in clinical trials right now. It is going to be a very, very important therapeutic class over the next couple of decades.

NGP. You are involved in a number of strategic deals with many big pharma companies. Why is this? And how important is it to you?

SS. We have the most powerful tool for helping chemists to select the best compounds to advance into clinical development, and that technology is extremely attractive to pharmaceutical companies. Although getting Ambit’s story out has taken some time, KinomeScan uptake has been very gratifying for us. At the same time we’ve put important partnerships in place, we have also used the technology to develop our own pipeline of drug candidates – the first candidate is in clinical trials now.

NGP. What are the most important things you look for when partnering with other companies?

SS. At the very top of the list is creating value for both parties. Small biotech companies are often in a position where they feel that validating the technology by bringing in an external partner is so important that the deal becomes asymmetrical in value. The pharmaceutical partners get a lot of value in the deal, but for the biotechnology company, the deal creates very little value. In fact, some deals create negative values for the biotechnology company. We have been very careful to make sure that our deals are symmetrical and that both parties win.

NGP. Do you ever come across challenges when working with other companies?

SS. Always! We encounter the typical issues in deal-making, and that is not unexpected. Sometimes, the goals can be cross wired. We anticipate the potential for cross-wired goals and prepare for that ahead of time by putting together a contract that allows some flexibility for both partners. In essence, we want to feel that we can move in a different direction without trampling over our partners’ rights, and we want them to feel that way too. Another challenge we face all the time is working together across several time zones. As a company, we need to recognize that many of our partners can be hours ahead of us, so we are as flexible as possible in dealing with those time differences.

NGP. Ambit Biosciences’ 2003 – 2005 growth was 817 percent. How do you explain this? What is the secret to your success?

SS. The secret to success is a lot of hard work and great fortune that our technology works very well and addresses a huge need out there. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies are very excited about the potential for small molecule kinase inhibitors to treat cancer and inflammatory diseases of the central nervous systems. Many companies are working on moving potential drugs to the clinic, and KinomeScan is a very, very powerful tool for helping them get there as efficiently as possible and with the best possible molecules.

NGP. What are the biggest challenges in the biotech industry at present?

SS. Funding! That is the perennial challenge in biotechnology because you are selling something that is not going to be profitable for several years, if not approaching a decade. It is always a challenge to portray the company and paint a picture that gets investors excited about taking such risks.

NGP. How optimistic are you about the future of biotechnology and healthcare in general?

SS. I am very optimistic, but I know there are going to be challenges. Certainly on a broad, national scale, we face healthcare challenges in ensuring that we are providing healthcare to everybody in society. The desire of the aging population to effectively treat the diseases of aging, and those people’s willingness to pay for those treatments is a trend that really bodes well for pharma and biotechnology in particular.

NGP. What are your predictions for the next 10 years/20 years?

SS. Although I don’t think a cure is in sight over the next 10 years or so, I think we are well on the way to treating cancer effectively. Remember back a decade ago when HIV was death sentence? Now we are very effectively managing HIV. I think we are going to get there with a lot of the cancers that are a scourge right now, cancers that we treat with old-fashioned chemotherapy and radiation. We are going to reach the point where we can manage these diseases over the next 10 years – maybe not all cancers but at least several of the larger tumor types. I also believe that we will get to the same base with some of these looming viral infections like hepatitis C.

“The secret to success is a lot of hard work and great fortune that our technology works very well.”