Two Harvard Biotech Entrepreneurs Are Creating The “Trojan Horse” Of Cancer Treatment

Existing methods of cancer treatment are expensive, risky, and carry adverse side effects for patients. Two Harvard researchers turned entrepreneurs are engineering drug therapies to increase the effectiveness of available treatments and decrease cancer patients’ emotional, physical, and financial burdens.

Nathaniel Brooks Horwitz and Nikita Shah founded Nivien Therapeutics to create the next generation of cancer treatments to augment current approaches. They share a common goal of increasing the effectiveness of chemotherapy and other standard treatment options and improving the patients’ quality of care.

Nikita Shah (left) and Nathaniel Brooks Horwitz (right).

Yet, their approach is radically different from incumbent pharmaceutical companies’ and other emerging biotech startups’ methods. Nivien’s goal is not to develop another expensive, risky drug that only works for a few people. The biotech company aims to combine develop new therapies that shut down the common defense mechanisms of cancer cells, allowing for existing treatment options to be more effective in driving a patient’s cancer into remission. Horwitz and Shah believe that by focusing on neutralizing a cancer cell’s ability to defend itself from treatment instead of creating a stronger drug to overwhelm the defective cell, they can treat a variety of cancers that share…