Harvard's Office of Technology Development and LabCentral invite you to the fourth event in the Guppy Tank series, where two teams of Harvard life-science innovators will pitch their concepts to a panel of entrepreneurs and investors for constructive, in-depth feedback.

Both teams are looking to identify the most attractive potential targets and the best strategy to extract commercial value from their unique platforms.

Please join us on Thursday, September 29, from 4 to 6 p.m. to learn from experts on startup formation and participate in giving audience feedback. Networking reception to follow.

Register Now

This "episode" of Guppy Tank features:

Solving the Substrate Polyspecificity of Enzymes — Test case: Insulin-Degrading Enzyme (IDE) inhibitors for treating diabetes

David Liu, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and Juan Pablo Maianti, Harvard FAS

This research team has developed a drug discovery platform targeting enzymes that are difficult to drug because they not only process a substrate relevant to disease, but also other physiologically important substrates. The platform produces ligands that block processing of the disease-implicated substrate but allow processing of other important substrates. The team will present, as a proof of concept, potent and highly target-specific substrate-selective inhibitors that block IDE-mediated degradation of insulin without affecting IDE’s ability to cleave another endogenous substrate, glucagon.

and

The Great Barriers — Modulating the blood-brain and blood-retinal barriers for repair and drug delivery

Chenghua Gu, Harvard Medical School

Having mapped and carefully characterized the physiological and molecular basis of blood-brain and blood-retinal barrier formation and maintenance, this team identified key regulatory mechanisms and targets that hold the promise to deliver drugs and repair the respective barriers.

Hope to see you there! RSVP here.