Akttyva was founded by scientists Usamah Kayyali, Ph.D. and Bruno Villoutriex, Ph.D. and led by an experienced biotech executive and entrepreneur Katya Tsaioun, Ph.D., an Intellectual Property attorney, and Chief Legal Officer of ArrantaBio Lana Gladstein, J.D., and a serial life sciences entrepreneur Mark Tepper, Ph.D. Inspired by the pandemic, the team is developing a treatment for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), a deadly condition with no treatment, which was first described as a “wet lung” during the First World War. Even before the pandemic, ARDS was the leading cause of death in the ICUs worldwide. ARDS is the reason for the death toll of COVID-19, flu, pneumonia, and other respiratory viruses. The current standard of care is mechanical ventilation and immune suppression with corticosteroids, which are consequences of ARDS, not a cause, and still carry 40% mortality. Akttyva is developing a small molecule that repairs vascular leak, which is the root cause of ARDS as well as over 60 other medical conditions. Akttyva currently has a lead molecule in advanced preclinical studies. To discover the lead compound Akttyva’s team led by Bruno started working during the lockdown. Dr. Villoutreix was in Paris and the rest of the team in Boston area. Bruno has remotely deployed advanced AI-assisted in silico screening tools, which he developed over the last 2 decades, to discover the first set of hit molecules. But this was just the beginning of the story. Akttyva got started with a single purpose to find a cure for the pandemic, but its early investors and founders realized that the drug discovery technology and the pathway can be used to address a broader set of medical conditions and targets, building a pipeline of novel therapies for unmet medical needs.
Since its founding in 2020 Akttyva has won a few prestigious competitions and has been selected to be MassChallenge finalist, won an IBM AI Award with resulting partnership with IBM and recently was awarded an NSF grant to advance its AI-based virtual drug-discovery engine.
A key event in advancing Akttyva’s programs was recruitment of Mario DiPaola, Ph.D. to join as Head of Research. Mario is an early investor in Akttyva, and he has established the key laboratory assays to confirm in silico predictions of the hit molecules. Mario is a seasoned biotech leader and entrepreneur, with a track record of getting drugs to clinic and successful exit of his company Blue Streams Labs in 2016. Mario has introduced Akttyva to Mansfield Bio-Incubator, and when the funding from NSF and angel investors came in, Akttyva has joined as a member.
Akttyva is growing and there are currently a couple of opportunities is to join working on the NSF grant and establishing new assays team collaboration and evidence-based research (recent publication reference). Akttyva’s goals are to deliver treatments to patients with unprecedented speed, while maintaining excellence in science, transparency of its research methods, fairness, equity and focus on unmet medical needs. Our team members joining us at all levels will be given an opportunity to make meaningful contributions to research, resulting not only in products that save lives, but reported in publications and new patents arising from our research. Our philosophy is that advancement should be based on drive and performance first, degrees second. Thinking outside the box, desire to learn and work as a team are what we seek in our employees. All employees joining this time will participate in stock options and stock grants, based on contributions.
