Startup profile: MBF Therapeutics
- Founded by: Tom Tillett, Lorraine Keller
- Year founded: 2008
- Headquarters: Ambler, PA
- Sector: Biotechnology
- Funding and valuation: ~$10 million (per PitchBook)
- Key ecosystem partners: Ben Franklin Technology Partners
MBF Therapeutics has spent years building vaccines. Now it’s positioning the data behind them as just as valuable.
The suburban Philadelphia biotech company, founded in 2008, has been developing a non-viral vaccine platform for animal health for more than a decade. In a new turn that reflects a broader shift in biotech, the company believes its immune-response data may be as marketable as its vaccines.
“Companies that want to have this research available to them could license it from us.”
Tom Tillett, MBF Therapeutics
Pharmaceutical companies building artificial intelligence models could license the research, creating what Tillett described as a new near-term revenue opportunity.
“We’ve looked at the data we’re generating as just proprietary, valuable data,” CEO and cofounder Tom Tillett told Technical.ly. “Now we’re saying, you know what, companies that want to have this research available to them could license it from us.”
In the past two years, major pharmaceutical companies including AstraZeneca, GSK and Sanofi have signed multibillion-dollar partnerships centered on artificial intelligence. Many of those agreements focus on access to structured biological data that can train models more effectively.
For MBF, the inspiration didn’t start with industry trends, Tillett said. Instead, it emerged after a board member with experience in artificial intelligence pointed to an unexpected example: a friend’s large archive of vintage car videos that AI companies were willing to pay to access. Since then, the company has tested the idea with outside advisers and potential partners, who, he said, have been supportive of the idea.
The company has not yet announced a data-licensing agreement or potential deal terms, but Tillett said early conversations with advisers and industry contacts have been encouraging.
“We’re not doing this pivot artificially,” Tillett said. “We recognize that the data we’ve got, and can generate, in today’s world has significant value.”
An evolving platform
The strategy builds on years of development. MBF operates largely as a virtual company with a core team that includes Tillett; chief scientific officer Lorraine Keller, who invented the platform; and chief medical officer Ron Cravens, a veterinarian who previously led Novartis Animal Vaccines.
The company, which has received funding from angel investors and Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, originally launched with a focus on developing treatments for canine cancer before running into regulatory roadblocks with the US Department of Agriculture, which oversees animal vaccines.
That setback forced a reset that led to MBF’s vaccine delivery system, which falls in a category referred to as “non-viral.” Rather than relying on the common strategy of using a modified virus to deliver genetic material, the platform uses an alternative method that Tillett said avoids the size limits that come with using viruses as delivery vehicles. As a result, it can deliver more complete versions of a pathogen, which he believes may prompt a stronger immune response.
Each study produces detailed biological data across multiple animals, leading to the robust data set.
Expanding into human health
The company is also working with researchers at the University of North Carolina to apply the same platform to human diseases, with plans to spin out a separate venture.
That effort would use the same vaccine delivery approach and generate similar immunological data, but in a human research setting. Tillett said the goal is to build a team focused specifically on advancing human vaccine candidates while exploring potential licensing opportunities with pharmaceutical partners.
In two years, he said, he hopes MBF will have secured a strategic animal health partner while the human health effort establishes its own commercial relationships.
If the strategy works, MBF would join a growing number of biotech companies exploring whether proprietary datasets can generate revenue alongside traditional drug development.
“The priority is to see this platform successfully developed to have major impacts in animal health diseases and in human health diseases,” Tillett said. “The data we can generate, whether it’s in human health or animal health, will have significant value in life sciences and help inform AI models that can have far-reaching effects.”
