Rutgers Startup Seeks to Design Safer Prescription Opiates

Rutgers startup Zena Therapeutics strives to create narcotic medications that will minimize or even eliminate overdoses from prescription drugs.

Co-founded by Eileen Carry, PhD, and Ariane Vasilatis, PhD, the company is based on an innovation developed at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey: a novel compound that does not increase the risk of overdose if taken with other central nervous system depressing substances such as opioids and alcohol.

“What we want to do is design medication so that even if it is misused, death is not the consequence,” said Carry. “Right now, when it comes to narcotics drugs, the onus is on the patient to take the medication as prescribed, but that is not a guarantee. We hope to shift the paradigm to substantially reduce overdose risk without compromising efficacy.”

“We believe that it is feasible and possible to design drugs and medications where death is not the end result of misuse, whether it’s accidental or on purpose as recreationally,” said Vasilatis. “We both have had family and friends succumbing to addiction and overdose, unfortunately, so we share a passion for this self-started project.”

The partnership between Carry and Vasilatis began at the lab of James Simon, PhD, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Plant Biology at Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. Carry’s research was focusing on safer medications for addiction and mental health, which led her to develop a proprietary compositional molecule. She asked Vasilatis to join her in entrepreneurial training with the I-Corps program at Rutgers, and from there, Zena Therapeutics was formed.

Said Vasilatis, “The I-Corps training, both at Rutgers and the national program, was paramount for us because we needed to understand: is there an end user? Is there a market for this? Or is it so niche that it would never get to that end user? I-Corps helped us realize that we had a little bit more of a niche market, but there was a broader application. Programs like I-Corps or the Yale Innovation Impact have been invaluable with all the knowledge we’ve gained and the people we've met through them.”

“We were able to hone our business model through participation in two National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps programs, the regional here at Rutgers and the national,” said Carry. “Doing the I-Corps training, where we interviewed prescribers and people from the patient demographic, we realized what a huge issue this is and that there’s a gap; nobody's really focusing on this issue. So that motivated us to keep moving forward.”

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, drug overdose deaths involving prescription opioids rose from 3,442 in 1999 to over 17,000 in 2017, and has hovered around 15,000 per year since. Carry and Vasilatis believe that people with addictive tendencies may become hooked on their prescription medication, and because over 40% of U.S. adults drink alcohol while using medications, their innovation could be life-changing to many people and families.

The company’s website states that early studies with its novel compound show “favorable pharmacokinetics, robust anxiolytic activity…and favorable safety characteristics.” Carry and Vasilatis hope the compound will help both individuals suffering from general anxiety and panic disorders as well as those dealing with withdrawal symptoms.

“We're starting with anxiety medications, specifically hoping to create alternatives for benzodiazepines, which are the current standard treatment for general anxiety and panic disorder and are commonly involved in overdoses with opiates,” said Carry. “Previously, companies have focused on the addictive potential of drugs. We understand that any psychoactive medication has addictive potential in the sense that it also has a mental component. However, none of the current medications were optimized to reduce overdose risk, and we believe we can do that without compromising efficacy. Essentially, we are creating medication with a ceiling effect, so if somebody takes the whole bottle, it won’t raise past the level of mild sedation but will still help with the anxiety.”

Vasilatis and Carry will continue to work together to lead Zena Therapeutics, which is named after the Slavic word for ‘woman’ (žena), serving as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer, respectively. The company has so far received funding through the New Jersey Health Foundation, the I-Corps program, $1 million in seed funding from Foundation Venture Capital Group, LLC, and a Phase I National Institutes of Health STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) grant, the latter through which they are able to use Rutgers core services. The next step, according to Carry, is to move the compounds to clinical trials.

“It seems like whoever jumps onto the Zena Therapeutics bandwagon doesn’t leave,” laughed Vasilatis. “And everyone who has helped us has been invaluable, from Dr. Simon, who helped push us into the I-Corps program, to Dr. Nicholas Bello (at the Department of Animal Sciences) who helped us obtain our Phase I STTR, to Dr. Jacques Roberge at the Rutgers Biomolecular Innovation Cores, to Rutgers Office for Research’s Technology Transfer and New Ventures teams, who have been keeping tabs on us and sending us grant opportunities or anything they feel that can help us. Our passion is what created Zena, and Eileen's ideas are what created the foundation for the company, but we wouldn't have been able to move forward without this support.”

“Zena Therapeutics is another example of how Rutgers researchers focus their work on issues and questions facing the world,” said Deborah Perez Fernandez, PhD, MBA, executive director of Technology Transfer, and Vince Smeraglia, JD, executive director of New Ventures. “The opiate crisis is personal to both Drs. Carry and Vasilatis, as it is to so many people, and the Technology Transfer and New Ventures teams are proud to support them in their endeavors to solve this issue.”