Mirna Therapeutics Announces $5 Million Award from Texas Emerging Technology Fund

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Mirna Therapeutics announced today that the Company received a $5 million award from the State of Texas through the Texas Emerging Technology Fund (“ETF”). The ETF was created with the goal of growing new and existing businesses to accelerate the introduction of new products and services in the marketplace. This is the largest award of this type that has ever been granted.

“The ETF award is a catalyst for advancing our microRNA mimic discovery platform and a robust pipeline of promising drug candidates,” said Dr. Paul Lammers, CEO and President. “Mirna has identified the connection between microRNAs and many diseases, including cancer, and we can leverage our first mover advantage and early patent filings to develop miRNA therapeutics for multiple cancer types. We are showing good effectiveness treating aggressive lung and prostate tumors in mouse models, and it is our mission at Mirna to become one of the leading microRNA-based therapeutics companies.”

As part of Mirna’s continued momentum, the Company announced it has appointed Daniel D. Von Hoff, M.D., F.A.C.P. and Steven L. McKnight, Ph.D. as scientific advisors. Dr. Lammers said, “Dr. McKnight brings to Mirna a critical understanding of intra-cellular signaling pathways involved in cancer. Dr. Von Hoff’s clinical and drug development expertise in oncology will assist Mirna in applying the functional understanding of the microRNA mechanisms to the development of cancer therapeutics and creating an optimal regulatory pathway for bringing our products to market. We are very excited to be working with them both.”

Daniel D. Von Hoff, M.D.

Dr. Von Hoff is Physician in Chief and Director of Translational Research at TGen (Translational Genomics Research Institute) in Phoenix, Arizona. He is also Chief Scientific Officer for US Oncology and for Scottsdale Healthcare’s Clinical Research Institute and holds an appointment as Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of Arizona, College of Medicine. Dr. Von Hoff’s major interest is in the development of new anticancer agents, both in the clinic and in the laboratory. Dr. Von Hoff has published more than 543 papers, 133 book chapters, and more than 950 abstracts. Dr. Von Hoff was appointed to President Bush’s National Cancer Advisory Board in June 2004 – March 2010 and is the past President of the American Association for Cancer Research (the world’s largest cancer research organization), a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, and a member and past board member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. He is a founder of ILEX™ Oncology, Inc. (acquired by Genzyme after Ilex had 2 agents, alemtuzumab and clofarabine approved by the FDA for patients with leukemia). He is founder and the Editor Emeritus of Investigational New Drugs – The Journal of New Anticancer Agent, co-founder of the AACR/ASCO Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop, and Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.

Steven L. McKnight, Ph.D.

Dr. McKnight is Professor and Chairman of the Biochemistry Department at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. The McKnight laboratory is focused on the regulation of transcription factors, the regulatory proteins that switch genes on and off, at a biochemical level with keen attention to biological relevance. The first 15 years of his career were spent at the Department of Embryology of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. There, Dr. McKnight used molecular biological and biochemical methods to study how genes turn on and off in mammalian cells. In 1991 Dr. McKnight left academia and moved to San Francisco to co-found a biotechnology company devoted to the discovery of ethical drugs capable of treating human disease via the regulation of gene expression. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Texas and earned his doctorate in Biology at the University of Virginia. Dr. McKnight is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

About Mirna Therapeutics

Mirna Therapeutics is a biotechnology company focused on the development and commercialization of microRNA (miRNA) therapeutics. The Company has a substantial body of pending intellectual property around miRNAs developed by its own scientists as well as in-licensed from other institutions. Mirna’s IP portfolio contains (>300) miRNAs with applications in oncology and other diseases. Oncology-directed miRNAs include those that are key tumor suppressors in cancer, such as miR-34 and let-7 that have proven to block tumor growth in a number of different pre-clinical animal studies (Johnson et al., Cell, 2005; Esquela-Kerscher et al., Cell Cycle, 2008; Trang et al., Oncogene, 2009). The Company, founded in 2007, is located in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit www.mirnarx.com.