Summer Internship

EydisBio Inc. is a small biotech company located in Durham, NC which originated as a spin out of Dr. Timothy Haystead’s lab at Duke University. The company was founded in 2016 by Timothy Haystead, PhD, Neil Spector, MD, and Philip Hughes, PhD, and has recently expanded to include both Scott Scarneo PhD, MBA, and Robert Freeze, MBA. With an initial focus on inflammatory autoimmune diseases, the current goal of EydisBio is to advance their lead TAK1 inhibitor, HS-276, for the treatment of autoimmune and inflammatory disorders. At present, they are advancing HS-276 through pre-IND enabling safety studies en route to IND-enabling safety studies in preparation for IND filing. However, they are also exploring HS-276’s potential in other indications as well, such as inflammatory bowel disease, systemic lupus erythematous, systemic sclerosis, COVID-19 induced acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and others.

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As a Business Development Intern this past summer, I worked on writing commercialization plans for their COVID-19 acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), osteoarthritis (OA), FLT3-mutated acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and systemic sclerosis (SSc) programs as part of their Phase II SBIR grant filings with the NIH this September. While a large portion of the market research and writing efforts was autonomous, I worked in close collaboration with Robert Freeze, MBA and Dr. Scott Scarneo, PhD (Director of Research and Development) for guidance and support throughout the summer internship. Along with market research, I identified and performed outreach to experts/clinicians/KOLs for voice-of-the-customer feedback on the potential of all programs, their competitiveness, market need, target product specifications, and other feedback/guidance to use for strategic planning. With the initial scope of the internship only being two commercialization plans, I was able to complete five plans over the ten week period. Along with finishing all commercialization plans, I also assisted in multiple mini projects throughout the summer. Some of these included: identifying other indications that HS-276 could be applicable for, market sizing and cost analyses, submitting grant applications through the eRA-NIH website, and identifying appropriate VC firms for EydisBio to engage with.

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