Preclinical-stage biotechnology

Dialing down MYC, a cancer driver that has resisted conventional drugs.

A new class of dual-action, low-toxicity medicines designed to stop cancer growth, reactivate the immune system and minimize side effects.

Cartridge Therapeutics is an AI-native drug company developing siRNA medicines designed to partially silence the MYC oncogene, founded on research from Stanford University.

A delivery platform, not a single drug, aimed at MYC, which is elevated or deregulated in up to 70% of human cancers.

Our approach Contact

The problem

MYC drives many cancers, yet it has no targeted therapy with proven clinical benefit.

A central cancer driver.

MYC encodes a transcription factor whose aberrations, or upregulation of MYC-related pathways, occur in the vast majority of human cancers.

Tumors depend on it.

In preclinical models, lowering MYC below a threshold level can cause tumor regression, a dependence known as oncogene addiction, and suppressing MYC can help restore the immune response against the tumor.

Long called "undruggable."

Decades of effort have not yet produced a MYC-targeted therapy with demonstrated clinical efficacy.

Our approach

Dial down MYC at the RNA level, and solve delivery.

Cartridge pairs anti-MYC siRNA, building on Dean Felsher's MYC research at Stanford, with the Cartridge delivery platform, built on biodegradable RNA carriers from Robert Waymouth's group at Stanford.

Our medicines are designed to partially silence MYC, enough to slow tumor growth and reactivate the immune response.

01
Package.
Our delivery platform binds and protects the siRNA.
02
Release.
Inside the cell, the platform releases its cargo.
03
Dial down.
The siRNA is designed to partially reduce MYC RNA.

Dual action

Blocks tumor growth.

Designed to lower MYC below what tumors need to grow.

Reactivates immune response.

Designed to lower the CD47 and PD-L1 checkpoints that shield tumors.

Based on Shachaf et al., Cancer Research, 2008 and Casey et al., Science, 2016.

AI-native drug development

We are building AI into how we develop medicines, from discovery to regulatory filings.

An AI scientist.

We are building an AI scientist trained on more than 24 years of proprietary MYC research data and proprietary observations from the Felsher lab at Stanford.

Digital twins.

We are developing digital twins, computational models of tumors and patients, to help design and prioritize experiments.

Through regulatory filings.

We are building AI support across the pipeline, from discovery through preparing filings with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Lead program

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC)

TNBC lacks the estrogen, progesterone and HER2 receptors that many breast cancer therapies target, and it has the poorest outcomes of the breast cancer subtypes. MYC signaling is disproportionately elevated in triple-negative tumors compared with receptor-positive breast tumors.

Program: Anti-MYC siRNA
Stage: Preclinical research

Platform

One delivery platform, many MYC-driven cancers.

Our delivery platform is designed to carry anti-MYC siRNA, so the same approach could potentially extend well beyond our lead program.

Lead program

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC)

Potential future indications

Liver cancer (HCC)
Lymphoma
Multiple myeloma
Prostate cancer

Based on Dang, Cell, 2012 and Dhanasekaran et al., Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology, 2022.

Designed for low toxicity.

Our biodegradable carriers break down into neutral small molecules that were well tolerated in mice, and partial silencing is designed to avoid shutting MYC off in normal cells.

Based on Haabeth OAW, et al., PNAS, 2018 and Blake TR, et al., Bioconjugate Chemistry, 2023.

Team

Founders and team

Dean W. Felsher, MD, PhD

Scientific co-founder and advisor

Professor of Medicine (Oncology) and of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine, and Director of Translational Research and Applied Medicine (TRAM). His lab studies how oncogenes such as MYC initiate and maintain cancer.

Robert M. Waymouth, PhD

Scientific co-founder and advisor

Robert Eckles Swain Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and, since 2026, a member of the National Academy of Sciences. His group co-discovered the RNA delivery chemistry behind the Cartridge delivery platform.

George W. Sledge Jr., MD

Clinical co-founder

Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Caris Life Sciences. A breast cancer specialist, he was Chief of the Division of Oncology at Stanford (2013–2020) and President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (2010–2011).

Paul Grewal

Business lead, SIC Venture Studio

Leads company building, operations and partnerships for Cartridge Therapeutics through SIC Venture Studio.

Stanford affiliations are listed for identification only and do not imply endorsement by Stanford University.

Selected publications

Felsher DW. Cancer revoked: oncogenes as therapeutic targets. Nature Reviews Cancer, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc1070
Jain M, et al. Sustained loss of a neoplastic phenotype by brief inactivation of MYC. Science, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1071489
Shachaf CM, et al. Genomic and proteomic analysis reveals a threshold level of MYC required for tumor maintenance. Cancer Research, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-07-6192
Rakhra K, et al. CD4+ T cells contribute to the remodeling of the microenvironment required for sustained tumor regression upon oncogene inactivation. Cancer Cell, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ccr.2010.10.002
Casey SC, et al. MYC regulates the antitumor immune response through CD47 and PD-L1. Science, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac9935
Dang CV. MYC on the path to cancer. Cell, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2012.03.003
Dhanasekaran R, et al. The MYC oncogene: the grand orchestrator of cancer growth and immune evasion. Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41571-021-00549-2
Smith BAH, et al. MYC-driven synthesis of Siglec ligands is a glycoimmune checkpoint. PNAS, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2215376120
McKinlay CJ, et al. Charge-altering releasable transporters (CARTs) for the delivery and release of mRNA in living animals. PNAS, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1614193114
Haabeth OAW, et al. mRNA vaccination with charge-altering releasable transporters elicits human T cell responses and cures established tumors in mice. PNAS, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1810002115
Blake TR, et al. Lysine-derived charge-altering releasable transporters: targeted delivery of mRNA and siRNA to the lungs. Bioconjugate Chemistry, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.3c00019

Contact

Get in touch

For partnership, research and general inquiries, email Paul Grewal.