As Harvard University reels from extensive cuts to federal funding by the Trump administration, one researcher there has secured his lab’s future by looking abroad. Gökhan Hotamışlıgil, M.D., Ph.D., has secured about $39 million from a Turkish investment group to support the next 10 years of his group’s research on new antibodies for obesity and other metabolic diseases.
Once these antibodies are ready for human testing, a new biotech called Enlila will launch in the U.S. and may license them from Hotamışlıgil to begin clinical development, Hotamışlıgil told Fierce Biotech in an interview.
The financial commitment comes from İş Private Equity, a subsidiary of Istanbul-based İşbank Group.
“İşbank is proud to support Professor Gökhan Hotamışlıgil’s research, with the goal of transforming a scientific discovery into a potential therapy for chronic conditions related to aging and obesity,” İşbank CEO Hakan Aran said in a June 16 release. “Alongside academic research, the newly established biotechnology venture, Enlila, will work to turn academic discoveries into potential therapies that support healthier living and improve quality of life.”
The groundwork for Enlila was first laid last September, when Hotamışlıgil was invited as one of two biomedical speakers at a centennial celebration for İşbank, he recalled in the interview. After speaking about his journey in science, his lab’s research and the difficult task of securing biomedical research funding, he had a chance to chat with Aran and others from İşbank who expressed a willingness to help fund his work.
“It was really a series of unanticipated good coincidences and my willingness to talk sincerely about the challenges that I face in my own scientific adventures,” Hotamışlıgil explained.
The agreement is the culmination of decades of work by Hotamışlıgil on FABP4 (also called aP2), a hormone secreted by adipose tissue that helps control the body’s metabolism.
“It is almost like an energy currency signal which communicates with all the metabolic organs,” Hotamışlıgil said. “But during aging and obesity, there is an inappropriate increase in the levels of this protein in circulation, and that is very strongly related to metabolic pathologies associated with these conditions.”
In 2015, Hotamışlıgil’s team identified an antibody that targets aP2 and could reduce blood glucose levels and fat mass in obese mice.
“We have a large collection of antibodies in hand, but with our own resources and academic structure, we haven't been able to pursue all of these antibodies to the same level of preclinical characterization,” Hotamışlıgil said. With the new funding, “this is what we're going to devote a lot of energy to.”
A school in 'mourning'
As the Trump administration has targeted funding for Harvard, the dean of the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, where Hotamışlıgil is based, has encouraged faculty to pursue “direct and purposeful industry engagement” as an alternative source of research funding.
“Many of us have spent the spring mourning the changes inflicted on our school,” Dean Andrea Baccarelli, M.D., Ph.D., wrote in a June 11 email reviewed by Fierce Biotech. “But amid the sorrow, we have also been organizing—and acting—to preserve the core of our research and educational missions.”
To support outreach to potential private sector partners, Baccarelli said the school’s Office of Research Strategy and Development is convening an advisory group of faculty with experience partnering with industry and reaching out to alumni in the private sector to help forge new connections.
As the funding cuts came, Hotamışlıgil was in the process of renewing his NIH grants, he told Fierce Biotech.
“I had a training grant which was canceled,” Hotamışlıgil explained, while a research grant that was set to be considered by an advisory council—the final review step at the NIH—never saw the light of day after the review was called off. “It's no longer considered until something changes,” he said.
As valuable as industry support can be, Hotamışlıgil said it can never fully replace federal funding for basic science, especially for research at an earlier stage than his own.
“We discovered this hormone 20 years ago, and so not every project would be at that stage,” he said. “In order for projects to reach that kind of maturity, you need a wide variety of support systems.”