Despite decades of progress in oncology, outcomes for some of the deadliest cancers have barely changed. According to the American Association for Cancer Research, pancreatic cancer still has a five-year survival rate of just 13 percent. It is even lower, around 5–6 percent, for one brain cancer. One reason is that Brain cancer patients are still treated with a chemotherapy drug, temozolomide, which was approved in 1999.
Most existing drugs rely on damaging DNA, a strategy tumors have learned to resist, often at the cost of severe side effects for patients. As a result, entire patient populations are left with few options and little hope.
Cypris Therapeutics is addressing this gap and the needs of cancer patients by taking a fundamentally different approach to drug discovery. Instead of designing drugs that attack DNA, the company develops nature-inspired molecules that target how cancer cells survive and grow.
To better understand how their process works, we spoke to Kyle Parella, CEO of Cypris Therapeutics. This article contains notable highlights from our entire conversation.
Also Read:
This interview is part of our exclusive Scouted By GreyB series. Here, we speak with the founders of innovative startups to understand how their solutions address critical industry challenges and help ensure compliance with industry and government regulations. (Know more about startups scouted by GreyB!)
“From a humanitarian standpoint, that’s actually really frustrating. Why have all of these other cancers seen so much progress in the therapeutic space, but these handful have seen basically no progress?”
Kyle Parella is the co-founder and CEO of Cypris Therapeutics, a U.S.-based drug discovery company developing new treatments for aggressive and therapeutically resistant cancers, including brain and pancreatic cancer. Trained as a chemist, Parella holds a PhD in Chemistry from Clarkson University and has experience in biochemical research, giving him a strong foundation in small-molecule drug discovery. Under Kyle’s leadership, Cypris is incubated by Ichor Life Sciences and also secured over $500,000 in pre-seed funding.
Nature-Inspired Medicine that works 8x better on cancers
Cypris Therapeutics is a drug discovery company focused on developing new treatments for some of the most aggressive and therapeutically resistant cancers, including brain, pancreatic, and prostate cancer. The company uses nature-inspired small molecules to target cancer metabolism rather than DNA damage. It aims to improve effectiveness while reducing harm to healthy tissue with its treatments. By starting with the hardest cancer type to treat, brain cancer, Cypris is building a platform it believes can later be extended to multiple diseases with similar biological weaknesses.
What exactly is CyprisTherapeutics working on, and why focus on these cancers first?
Kyle: We’re a drug discovery company chasing the nastiest cancers like brain cancer, pancreatic cancer, resistant prostate cancer, and a few others. These are cancers where, unlike many others, patients haven’t seen real improvements in treatment for decades. In brain cancer, the standard drug, temozolomide (TMZ), has been around since 1999 and only extends life by about two and a half months. From both a scientific and humanitarian perspective, that’s incredibly frustrating.
We chose these cancers for two reasons. First, our intellectual property and technical expertise are uniquely suited to them. Second, if we can solve the hardest problem first, everything else becomes easier. If our platform works in brain cancer, applying it to other diseases is largely rinse-and-repeat. That combination of impact and scalability is what drives our focus
Your platform seems broadly applicable. Where are you today in terms of development?
Kyle: We’ve already published early proof-of-concept data in a peer-reviewed journal showing that our molecules are worth pursuing in brain cancer. In lab models using patient-derived tumor cells, one of our prototypes is about eight times more effective than the current standard of care. Just as importantly, it shows low toxicity in healthy human brain tissue.
Right now, we’re in what’s called the lead optimization stage. That means we’re refining our best candidate to make it as safe and effective as possible before moving into FDA-enabling studies.
You describe your molecules as “nature-inspired.” What does that actually mean?
Most approved medicines, if you exclude antibodies and vaccines, come directly from nature or are lightly modified versions of natural molecules. Nature has had billions of years to optimize chemistry inside living systems. Humans and computers haven’t. So instead of designing drugs entirely from scratch, we start with molecules that already work well in biology and then refine them.
The advantage is reliability. When you take something from one living system and put it into another, it’s more likely to behave predictably. Fully computer-designed molecules often fail when they meet real biology. Using nature as our starting point dramatically improves our odds
How does your approach reduce toxicity while staying effective against tumors?
Kyle: Most current cancer drugs work by damaging DNA. Tumors are surprisingly good at repairing that damage, which is why patients often don’t respond well and why healthy cells suffer along the way. Our drugs work differently. They target a metabolic dependency that aggressive cancer cells have, but healthy brain cells don’t.
Brain tumors grow very fast, and to do that, they need large amounts of fats and cholesterol that they must make themselves. Healthy neurons don’t have that need. By blocking this internal fat production, we essentially starve the tumor while leaving healthy cells mostly unaffected. That’s why we’re seeing stronger effects with less toxicity
Drug delivery to the brain is notoriously difficult. How are you addressing that?
Kyle: That’s one of the core challenges in brain cancer, and it’s something we’re deeply focused on. We have a world-class medicinal chemist whose specialty is tuning molecules so they reach specific tissues, including the brain. This isn’t an afterthought. It’s our main objective right now.
We’re designing these molecules to have the right distribution, stability, and exposure so they can actually reach brain tumors in patients. We believe we’ve developed an elegant solution, and it’s one of the reasons we’re confident in this approach
What does your timeline look like for entering human trials?
Kyle: If everything is challenging and nothing gets fast-tracked, a conservative estimate would be entering human studies around 2030. That said, these cancers are extremely deadly, and regulators often move faster with experimental therapies in these cases. So it could happen sooner.
I prefer to set realistic expectations. Our goal is to move as quickly as possible without overpromising. But either way, the path forward is very clear to us.
Meet our Interviewer – Shabaz Khan, Marketing Manager at GreyB
Shabaz Khan, Marketing Manager
Want to find other scalable startups working on sustainable water treatment solutions? Please fill out the form below to contact our experts.
Get the Report in your Inbox
Please share all your queries below
