Innovation
Trogenix: Fighting cancer the ancient Greek way
- Innovation
- Article
- 3 minutes read
Professor Steve Pollard and Dr. Ken Macnamara are on a mission to cure the world’s most devastating diseases, starting with the most feared and aggressive brain cancer. Their revolutionary approach is like a Trojan horse, sneaking inside tumours, awakening the immune system to destroy the cancer from within. The goal is a treatment that cures the cancer and provides long-term protection against recurrence. Trogenix needed a partner who understood both the science and the ambition; when their VC recommended us, they listened.
- After decades studying how cancer hijacks the body’s genetic instruction manual, Professor Steve Pollard and Dr Ken Macnamara discovered a way to turn cancer’s own biology against itself.
- Starting with glioblastoma, one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer, Trogenix turns tumours into personalised vaccines, helping the body to recognise, attack and prevent tumour recurrence.
- With a banking partner recommended through its VC network, Trogenix found a team that understood the science and the sector.
The Greeks used a Trojan horse to bring down a city. Trogenix is using one to bring down cancer.
For Professor Steve Pollard and Dr. Ken Macnamara, the mission was clear: challenge diseases once considered incurable, starting with glioblastoma, the most aggressive and feared form of brain cancer. After more than two decades studying how stem cells function, Pollard uncovered how cancers hijack the body’s own genetic “instruction manual” to grow and survive.
That sparked a radical idea: what if the cancer’s own mechanisms could be turned against it?
The answer became Trogenix.
Using harmless viral vectors as a kind of Trojan horse, Trogenix delivers precision genetic therapies directly inside tumour cells. Once there, the treatment switches the cancer cells into targets the immune system can recognise and attack. In effect, the tumour becomes its own personalised vaccine factory teaching the body to destroy not just one part of the cancer, but the full spectrum of tumour cells that make glioblastoma so difficult to treat.
The ambition is extraordinary: a potential “one-and-done” therapy that not only destroys cancer but helps prevent it from returning. A treatment designed to give patients their lives back and hope for a future.
Trogenix needed a partner who understood the science, and the sector. Their VC told them they should bank with us. Trogenix listened.
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