Company: MOMO Biotech
Location: London
Founded: 2022
Founders: Dr. Elijah Mojares, Jonah Rodgus
Written by: Bill Carton
Edited by: Natasha Barrow and Caroline Babisz
Novel oncology drugs have some of the highest failure rates for entry into the clinic. Therefore, new and innovative approaches to preclinical testing are needed now more than ever. This is particularly true for pancreatic cancer, an underfunded area of oncology research. Despite pancreatic cancer currently being one of the most lethal cancers, predicted to become the second highest cause of cancer death by 2030 (1), few groundbreaking treatments have been developed in the last 30 years (2). A big reason for this is the inaccuracy of current preclinical models, many of which fail to accurately recapitulate the tumour microenvironment (TME).
Enter MOMO Biotech: a start-up that aims to tackle this issue by building new, accurate models of the TME for solid tumour drug discovery. Using TMEmic (patent pending), a tumour-on-a-chip device, MOMO Biotech can more accurately recapitulate the TME of solid tumours including the very fibrotic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. In short, their hardware allows for improved preclinical testing of novel therapeutics, accelerating drug discovery.
What makes TMEmic stand out from the crowd of other organ-on-a-chip models (3)? TMEmic uses a unique method to re-establish the TME, and other types of microenvironments, that are important in complex cell signalling mechanisms within diseased tissues. Not only can MOMO Biotech accurately re-establish the TME of solid tumours, but they are currently developing an end-to-end hardware+software solution for customers, including MO-Vis, a visualisation dashboard for drug testing experiments, and MOMO-I, a TME and experiment-planning AI. MOMO plan to work closely with preclinical biotechs using their hardware+software solution to help decode the multi-modal data generated whilst testing novel therapies. Altogether, their technology allows for a more complete understanding of the role played by the TME in cancer biology and further improves our understanding of how novel therapies might work or what may be preventing them from currently working.
Speaking to founders Elijah Mojares and Jonah Rodgus, their ambition knows no bounds with plans to improve preclinical models beyond pancreatic cancer, focussing on other solid tumours, as well as other diseases such as auto-immune diseases and neurodegenerative diseases.
MOMO Biotech was started in 2022 and secured funding from EWOR in 2023. Dr. Elijah Mojares, one of the original co-founders, has a PhD in tissue engineering and biomaterials and has previously worked in the area of pancreatic cancer research. Recently, following a pivot towards their latest offerings, Jonah Rodgus joined MOMO as a co-founder. Jonah, with a strong background in bioinformatics and experience in dealing with large biological datasets, is helping to push the company towards their goal of providing an end-to-end hardware+software solution for customers.
Elijah also has previous start-up experience, having co-founded a bike sharing startup in the Philippines, experience which he has taken into his role as CEO of MOMO Biotech. On a personal note, both Jonah and Elijah also have experienced losses to pancreatic cancer, which helps to fuel their ambitions to help develop new therapies for this under-funded disease.
Both Elijah and Jonah have big plans for MOMO Biotech and in the next two years they hope to begin helping multiple companies de-risk their drug assets.
MOMO Biotech wants to use their hardware+software to help other biotechs obtain the preclinical data needed for an investigational new drug application, allowing them to get their novel therapies into clinical trials. In the long-term, both founders would love to see some of those life-changing treatments that TMEmic helped to test preclinically, in the clinic and accessible to cancer patients. Whilst initially looking to serve biotechs’ drug assets’ transition from preclinical to clinical, MOMO plans to develop toolkits for faster and reliable insight generation that would facilitate co-development with biotechs and pharmaceutical companies.
For those interested in keeping up with MOMO Biotech and their exciting future plans you can check out their website at www.momobio.tech or their LinkedIn here.
MOMO Biotech is one of eight groundbreaking startups recently graduated from the SEC's in-house accelerator programme, the Innovators Club. Find out more about the Innovators Club here.
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