Ariane Vasilatis, left and Elieen Carry, are cofounders of Zena Therapeutics.

Rutgers startup Zena Therapeutics is working to develop safer medications that would minimize or even eliminate overdoses from prescription drugs used in mental health treatment.

“We believe that it is feasible and possible to design drugs and medications where death is not the end result of misuse, whether it’s accidental or on purpose as recreationally,” said Chief Executive Officer Ariane Vasilatis, who earned her doctoral degree in plant science in 2021 from Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and cofounded the company with fellow alumnus Elieen Carry.

Their innovation was developed at Rutgers: a novel compound that does not increase the risk of overdose if taken with other depressants such as opioids or alcohol.

“Right now, when it comes to narcotics drugs, the onus is on the patient to take the medication as prescribed, but that is not a guarantee,” said Carry, who graduated with her doctoral degree from the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy’ Department of Medicinal Chemistry in 2021 and now serves as the company’s chief scientific officer. “We hope to shift the paradigm to substantially reduce overdose risk without compromising efficacy.”

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, overdose deaths involving prescription opioids rose from 3,442 in 1999 to over 17,000 in 2017, and has hovered around 15,000 per year since. Carry and Vasilatis believe that people with addictive tendencies may become hooked on their prescription medication, and because over 40% of U.S. adults drink alcohol while using medications, their innovation could be life-changing to many people and families. 

“We both have had family and friends succumbing to addiction and overdose, unfortunately, so we share a passion for this self-started project,” Vasilatis said.

The duo hopes the compound will help individuals suffering from general anxiety and panic disorders as well as those dealing with withdrawal symptoms. 

They are starting with anxiety medications, hoping to create alternatives for benzodiazepines, such as Xanax or Valium, which are the current standard treatment for general anxiety and panic disorder. They are fast-acting, but they can have fatal withdrawal if abruptly discontinued or mixed with alcohol or opioids.

“None of the current medications were optimized to reduce overdose risk, and we believe we can do that without compromising efficacy,” Carry said. “Essentially, we are creating medication with a ceiling effect, so if somebody takes the whole bottle, it won’t raise past the level of mild sedation but will still help with the anxiety.” 

The next step, according to Carry, is to move the compounds to clinical trials.

Their partnership between Vasilatis and Carry began at the lab of James Simon, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Plant Biology at Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences while they were both pursuing their doctoral degrees. Carry’s research was focusing on safer medications for addiction and mental health, which led her to develop a proprietary compositional molecule. She asked Vasilatis to join her in entrepreneurial training with the I-Corps program at Rutgers, and from there, Zena Therapeutics was formed. 

“The I-Corps training, both at Rutgers and the national program, was paramount for us because we needed to understand,” Vasilatis said. “Is there an end user? Is there a market for this? Or is it so niche that it would never get to that end user? I-Corps helped us realize that we had a little bit more of a niche market, but there was a broader application.”

“We were able to hone our business model through participation in two National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps programs, the regional here at Rutgers and the national,” Carry said. “Doing the I-Corps training, where we interviewed prescribers and people from the patient demographic, we realized what a huge issue this is and that there’s a gap; nobody’s really focusing on this issue. So that motivated us to keep moving forward.”

Zena Therapeutics, which is named after the Slavic word for “woman,” has so far received funding through the New Jersey Health Foundation, the I-Corps program, $1 million in seed funding from Foundation Venture Capital Group, LLC, and a Phase I National Institutes of Health STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) grant, the latter through which they are able to use Rutgers core services. 

“Our passion is what created Zena, and Eileen’s ideas are what created the foundation for the company, but we wouldn’t have been able to move forward without this support,” Vasilatis said.

“Zena Therapeutics is another example of how Rutgers researchers focus their work on issues and questions facing the world,” said Deborah Perez Fernandez, executive director of the Office for Research’s Technology Transfer unit. “The innovation developed by Zena Therapeutics has the potential to make a positive change in the lives of so many people.”

“The opiate crisis is personal to both Drs. Carry and Vasilatis, as it is to so many people, and the New Ventures team is proud to continue to support them in their endeavors to solve this issue,” said Vince Smeraglia, executive director of the Office for Research’s New Ventures department.

By: Trevor Rutledge-Leverenz

Date: December 4, 2024