As it transitions from a discovery- to a clinical-stage biotech, Volastra Therapeutics is bringing longtime adviser Samuel Bakhoum, M.D., Ph.D., on board as its chief scientific officer.
Bakhoum is a leading expert on chromosomal instability and its role in cancer progression. He co-founded Volastra in 2019 and has been advising the company while maintaining an active research program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
“We are 100% focused on chromosomal instability and trying to find ways to drug that to benefit patients,” Volastra CEO Charles Hugh-Jones, M.D., told Fierce Biotech in a joint interview with Bakhoum. “What could we ask more for than having the world expert on chromosomal instability come and join us?”
Bakhoum earned his M.D. and Ph.D. from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and completed his clinical training at Memorial Sloan Kettering. He’s published more than 80 papers, including two unraveling the mechanisms of micronuclear collapse in cancer progression that appeared in Science on the same day in August.
Unstable chromosomes are a hallmark of cancer, with cancer cells frequently containing too few or too many chromosomes. Volastra's first drugs targeting chromosomal instability in cancer are in phase 1 clinical trials.
“What has driven me from Day 1, getting into this field, is trying to make an impact and move the needle when it comes to improving cancer care,” Bakhoum said. As he was contemplating whether to make the leap from academia to industry, he said, a mentor told him: “Isn't this what we are here for?”
Volastra’s lead candidates are inhibitors of KIF18A, a protein that helps guide chromosomes into daughter cells during cell division. Normal cells can go without KIF18A, but cancer cells depend on it, making it an attractive target for new oncology drugs.
Both of Volastra’s KIF18A inhibitors have fast-track designations from the FDA, Hugh-Jones said.
“We're going to get to a point, probably some stage in 2025, where we make a decision as to which of those two assets we take forward,” he said. Bakhoum’s expertise, he added, will be critical in making that call.
One of the company’s KIF18A inhibitors, VLS-1488, is internally developed, while the other, sovilnesib, was licensed from Amgen in early 2023.
Bakhoum’s main focus will be reevaluating and rethinking Volastra’s discovery pipeline, he said, to take full advantage of all the possible targets within the field of chromosomal instability.
“Chromosomal instability has never been targeted in the clinic, and that is changing, and it's changing because of Volastra,” Bakhoum said. “We probably are best suited and best positioned not just to bring one target to the clinic, but to double down and expand the operation.”
Hugh-Jones expects updates on the KIF18A clinical trials in the coming months, he said.
Volastra has garnered attention from some big players over the years, forging a partnership with Microsoft in 2021 and signing a deal worth up to $1.1 billion with Bristol Myers Squibb in 2022.
The firm raised $60 million in a series A in early 2023, with Eli Lilly among its backers.
Editor's note: A previous version of this article stated Bakhoum is Volastra's first CSO appointment. Michael Su, Ph.D., previously served as the founding CSO of Volastra. The prior version of this article also had an inaccurate dollar value tied to the Microsoft partnership.