The FAST Program provides select entrepreneurs with intensive team review and coaching to perfect their business model, product development plans, and to build a compelling commercialization strategy. Emerging innovators benefit from the advice and counsel of industry veterans – custom-selected from the FAST network of over 425 professionals comprised of entrepreneurs, product, and business experts (i.e., clinical development, regulatory, reimbursement, and business development specialists) – during the twelve-week program. The program culminates with a Final FAST Showcase and Reception where FAST companies present to a distinguished audience of potential investors and collaboration partners.

July 29, 2022 – FAST Application Deadline
September 7, 2022– FAST Fall Opening Showcase, Virtual
October 12, 2022 – FAST Connections
October 13, 2022 – FAST Connections
December 13, 2022 – FAST Fall Closing Showcase

Email [email protected] if you would like to receive an invitation to our startup company showcases.

Acelot is an early stage biotechnology startup developing small molecules that inhibit multiple toxic protein species associated with neurodegenerative diseases. Challenges in the neurodegenerative space Acelot is tackling three major challenges in the neurodegenerative space: one, patients of many neurodegenerative diseases need therapies that hit multiple drug targets such as Aβ,tau, TDP-43 and α-synuclein. Two, effective drugs must specifically inhibit the toxic form of these proteins, the oligomer form. Three, an effective drug screening platform must incorporate robust oligomer characterization assays. Different oligomer size ranges are toxic depending on the protein species, 3, 4 but many assays do not robustly characterize specific sizes. Many assays also use preform edoligomers, which can be unstable, leading to biased oligomer characterization results. Acelot has developed a novel machine learning drug discovery and in vitro oligo mercharacterization platform that identifies and validates small molecules that act specifically upon the oligomer forms of Aβ,tau, TDP-43 and α-synuclein to treat neuro degenerative diseases. Its platform is validated in published research5, 6and its drugs display desirable safety and blood-brain PK properties in vivousing oral ROA in mice.

Acelot was founded in 2006 by UCSB Computer Science Professor Ambuj Singh. Dr. Singh is an expert in network and graphical modeling and has appointments in UCSB Biomolecular Science and Engineering. Michael Bowers, a UCSB Biochemistry professor and mass spectrometry expert inoligomer characterization, is an Advisor and academic collaborator to the company. Acelot collaborates with world renowned neurodegenerative experts, including Rakez Kayed, Sami Barmada and Yazi Ke. In 2022, Acelot hired a small full time team including Katie Planey, former CTO and co-Founder of Mantra Bio. At Mantra Bio, Katie led the R&D development of a best in class exosome therapeutics platform. Katie received their MBA and PhD in Biomedical Informatics from Stanford University. Acelot’s Director of Research is Vidhu Mathur, an expert in neurodegenerative disease models. She was a Senior Scientist at Annex on and conducted her PhD research in prions and amyloid oligomers at U Illinois Chicago.

Angeles Therapeutics

Angeles Therapeutics is a next generation cell therapy company that has been operating in a stealth-mode for the past eight years. Supported by a very large USC endowment and personal funds of its founder, Angeles has built not only the best-in-class but also one of the largest portfolios of next generation chimeric antigen receptors in the world. Further, Angeles has filed for global IP protection with over 120 (granted and pending) patent applications worldwide. A differentiating feature of Angeles CARs is their activity against solid tumors. Angeles is confident that with its next generation CAR design, it has solved the problem of lack of efficacy of CARs in solid tumors.

BioMark Oncology is a translationally enabled, preclinical-stage pharmaceutical company developing a platform to further the use of response biomarkers in clinical trials. Their mission is to advance precision medicine using response/pharma codynamic biomarkers and systems biology inpatients with severe unmet medical need. BioMark oncology was founded in 2021.They have since pursued SBIR funding from NCI for their lead orally available small molecule for glioblastoma and triple negative breast cancer. The lead compound for that program, BMO-001,targets the biosynthesis of a signaling eicosanoid/GPCR pathway. The eicosanoid can be measured in blood to assess target engagement, guide dosing levels and regimens, and stratify patients in clinical trials. They have proof of concept data in rodent in the mentioned indications and are lead optimizing and formulating a series currently to move their best oral candidate forward to IND-enabling studies. Efforts to secure patent protection are underway and freedom to operate has been determined. BioMark is also creating a platform biomarker quantitation assay and database (MyBioMark) with >1000 blood analytes per patient to guide our company’s drug discovery and development efforts. We are using established LC-MS/MS technology to measure 1000 protein and small molecule biomarkers in 4 multiplexed assays. We aim to develop a platform assay that can be offered as a contract research service to sponsors of clinical trials who are attempting to stratify patients, build clinically useful quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) models, and use response/pharmacodynamic biomarkers in indications where they are currently not readily available.

BioMark’s founder and CEO, Kayte Edson, PhD, is a translational scientist previously at Amgen and Covance. She has had success in entrepreneurial ventures outside of BioMark and is bringing her experience there to move this lead asset into clinical trials to benefit patients. Most work is currently outsourced, and the company currently has zero employees. BioMark currently occupies lab space in an incubator in Thousand Oaks, CA with shared lab equipment and resources. She collaborates with the UCLA and University of Washington Mass Spectrometry core facilities for any internal work done. Her contract organizations, collaborators and advisors include colleagues from Simulations Plus, University of Washington, City of Hope, Absorption Systems, Syngene, and Gattefosse

f5 Therapeutics’ platform is expanding the scope of degradable targets in the Targeted Protein Degradation space. Our methods allow access to the abundance of undiscovered neosubstrates available for degradation with potential in multiple indications. We identify these new targets in context with cellular assays allowing us to fully realize the wide class of neosubstrates afforded by cereblon. Multiple new targets we have discovered are currently not being pursued by other degrader companies. NExMods™ have demonstrated in vitro POC across five therapeutic areas (immuno-oncology, Wnt-driven cancers, auto-immune disease, NASH, liver fibrosis) and demonstrated 100X cereblon binding potency versus known clinical IMiDs. We have also demonstrated statistically superior tumor control versus sorafenib in a HepG2 (HCC) xenograft mouse model (in vivo).

We are a non-invasive diabetes testing and monitoring company developing the first portable saliva-based, graphene field-effect transistor (gFET) assay to measure the diabetic biomarker Glycated Albumin(GA).We are striving to address the disparity delaying treatment for Minorities, starting with African Americans found in Hemoglobin A1c (A1C) diagnosis for Type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes.

Problem: In the U.S., diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death, the leading cause of end-stage kidney disease,and new cases of blindness. Black people were twice as likely as whites to die from diabetes,3.2 times more likely to be diagnosed with end-stagerenal disease than whites, and 2.3 times more likely to be hospitalized for lower limb amputations than non-whites. A2019 study of African-born blacks living in America reported that~60% of Africans with diabetes and ~40% with prediabetes would be undiagnosed using A1C screening alone, exposing blacks to a longer undiagnosed period them at increased risk for long-term diabetes complications. The disparity in A1C testing means additional biomarkers are needed to improve the diagnosis of diabetes and prediabetes in black patients.

Weatherwax Biotechnologies (WXB) is a seed-stage startup developing the next generation of induced-proximity medicines. Our OmniTAC drug discovery engine yields molecules that co-opt existing cellular machinery to overcome exigent therapeutic challenges which have remained unapproachable to other modalities for decades. We make bifunctional drugs that induce the modification of drug targets by existing cellular machinery (rather than through direct modulation by the drug, the classical approach), unlocking the ability to go after high-value oncology targets.