Lankenau Institute for Medical Research Breakthrough Medicines Fund

Advancing promising bench-to-bedside research while enhancing the long-term sustainability of our mission.

Purpose of the fund

The Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR) Breakthrough Medicines Fund was created to make seed investments in selected LIMR startup companies driving our medical innovations. Funding will support advanced research and overcoming other hurdles companies must face in unlocking mainstream institutional investment. Any returns on the investment made by the LIMR Breakthrough Medicines Fund would be deposited back into the fund in an evergreen sustainability paradigm to grow the fund and support future investments in LIMR startup companies.

This is not a venture fund. It is a purely philanthropic fund enabling LIMR to advance its research mission and potentially produce a return to enhance future efforts. Unlike other LIMR philanthropic funds, this effort focuses on applied research rather than basic science, providing the ability to both advance medicine and grow our foundation resources simultaneously.

2023 use of Breakthrough Medicines Fund

Support from this fund in 2023 is being directed to LIMR's spin-out ophthalmology company Augen Therapeutics, Inc. Augen is built on LIMR’s discovery of a new way to prevent blindness caused by diabetes. The potential of this breakthrough is staggering, with the ability to preserve sight for millions of people throughout the world who could otherwise lose vision due to diabetes.

LIMR and Augen scientists and entrepreneurs believe passionately in LIMR's science: We believe LIMR may have discovered a way to save sight with a convenient daily tablet. For Augen to advance this research, institutional investors (venture firms) have requested additional data from two key experiments before choosing to make a substantial investment in the company. Toward this end, the LIMR Breakthrough Medicines Fund seeks to raise $1 million to invest in Augen to generate the requested experimental data.

LIMR’s work to curb diabetic retinopathy and partnership with Augen Therapeutics, Inc.

• Diabetic retinopathy is a disease that arises in patients with advanced diabetes, damaging the blood vessels in the part of the eye responsible for vision (retina). Left untreated, the vision loss caused by this disease may eventually lead to total blindness.
• Diabetic retinopathy is the most common cause of blindness in the U.S., affecting millions of people. The incidence of diabetic retinopathy is skyrocketing with the explosion of diabetes in the developed and developing world.
• Currently, most patients with diabetes are treated for retinopathy only when they experience vision loss or vision abnormalities, and then only by risky, unpleasant and/or tissue-destructive invasive methods that many patients cannot tolerate. At present, no oral medicines exist to protect against the risk of blindness caused by diabetic retinopathy.
• LIMR scientists have pioneered a new class of oral drugs taken as a tablet — IDO inhibitors — that appear to prevent blood vessel damage in the eye associated with diabetes.
• We founded Augen with Dr. Simon Tomlinson, CEO, to develop and commercialize our discovery.
• Dr. Sam Barone, an ophthalmologist who brings experience in developing retinal drugs in the biotechnology industry, has recently joined Augen as President and Chief Medical Officer to advance its clinical trial plans.
• Dr. Carl Regillo, Chief of the Retina Service at Wills Eye Hospital, has joined Augen as a key adviser working with Drs. Tomlinson and Barone and supporting key clinical experiments to illustrate the potential of LIMR’s discoveries to institutional investors.
• Building on LIMR’s founding basic and preclinical research, Augen is positioned as our patent licensee and partner to capitalize on this enormous opportunity to create a new therapeutic for a major unmet medicinal need with great importance to human health.
• From a business standpoint, Augen’s prospects are enhanced by its strong patent portfolio. Specifically, the U.S. Patent Office has allowed claims in the LIMR patents licensed by Augen to all drugs in the IDO inhibitor drug class pioneered at LIMR. By analogy, if claims to all statins had ever been issued, this would have created a huge royalty stream to the inventors’ institution.
• The LIMR Breakthrough Medicines Fund will enable key experiments to drive the enormous potential for improving clinical outcomes in patients with diabetic retinopathy, preserving sight and quality of life for millions of people around the world each year.

Give to LIMR online today

Learn more about other LIMR funding priorities

Cardiovascular Research Systemwide Campaign
Lankenau Institute for Medical Research funding priorities

Learn more about Lankenau Institute for Medical Research, or contact Katie Beddis, Executive Director of Development, Lankenau Medical Center at 484.476.8067 or [email protected].