The company targeting unmet needs in oncology

EPM speaks to Shorla Pharma’s CTO Orlaith Ryan about how the company is aiming to be a strong contender in the oncology market through therapies designed for women and children.  

Co-founded in 2018 between CTO Orlaith Ryan and CEO Sharon Cunningham, Shorla Pharma has quickly made a name for itself. The Irish company has been recognised as an emerging company in the oncology sector, being nominated for and winning entrepreneurial awards by the likes of The Irish Times and the Local Enterprise Office.

Back in June 2020, the company raised $8.3 million to help it advance its pipeline of therapies targeting women and paediatric cancers. Oncology may be a competitive sector within pharma, but Shorla is hoping that its approach towards treatments in the space will help it emerge as a serious contender.

“We concentrate on indications where existing treatments are limited, in shortage or inadequate for the target population,” CTO Orlaith Ryan says whilst discussing the company’s approach to treatments.

Shorla currently has three treatments within its pipeline and has been working with the US FDA towards new drug applications. The first to be launched in the US market  is a treatment for children with T-cell Leukemia, (SH-111). They have also created a drug for treating breast and ovarian cancers (SH-105), which they hope to have filed with the FDA for approval by Q1 2022. The last to move down the pipeline will be an oral solution that was developed to treat children with glioblastoma (SH-110) who have trouble swallowing, launch for which is planned in 2023.                 

The competitive nature of the oncology market isn’t lost to Ryan and it’s the company’s strong intellectual property and solid regulatory strategy that she believes will help Shorla gain a foothold within the industry.  

The fact that rare cancers “are often overlooked by larger companies and the market in general,” Ryan explains, allows Shorla to “address areas of unmet need [and] apply applicable strategic aspects from a market exclusivity perspective.”

Of course, whilst a strong commercial strategy is needed if success is to be had within pharma, Shorla was launched because Ryan and Cunningham want to develop treatments that can have a significant clinical impact on patients.

For instance, the company’s oral solution to treat Glioblastoma (SH-110) has been designed to reduce the treatment burden of patients suffering from this cancer. The oral solution has been made to be palatable for patients having to take it, with Ryan saying how a “simple change can really have a significant impact” on patients.

“This treatment is the standard of care so it’s the first therapy given for most treatment regimens. The treatment is effective but ultimately can’t be taken properly by the patient because it’s difficult to swallow, patients in this case can be very young children. Really it’s not an effective process and we need to alleviate that treatment burden for patients. We believe having a palatable treatment vs a very difficult to swallow treatment is significantly impactful,” Ryan says.

The decision to set up Shorla in Ireland stems from Ryan and Cunnigham’s previous careers at EirGen Pharma – a company which they saw grow from a very small start-up, to one employing 200 people and which later was acquired by US multinational Opko for $135 million.

“We saw that company grow and succeed from the very early days. That really motivated us to do something meaningful and purposeful, and ultimately have a wider impact.”

Whilst being based in Ireland allows Shorla to draw upon the country’s strong network of pharmaceutical talent, the company is largely looking towards the US market in terms of where it will initially distribute its products. However, a need to understand that market when setting up the company led Shorla to engage key stakeholders throughout the healthcare setting in the US. All of this was “to ensure that our products were screened and would ultimately be products that would have an impact, and be used by clinicians alike, once they got to market,” Ryan explains.

And it’s this key engagement with voices across the US healthcare market that Ryan thinks will help Shorla’s pipeline of therapies succeed.

“We’re very confident. It’s the engagement that we bring into the very early stage of our product development to ensure that they will ultimately be used in a clinical setting and to explore the payor landscape to ensure that they will be covered and ultimately get to the patient,” Ryan says.

With Ryan and Cunningham at the head of Shorla Pharma, the pair could be seen as an example of those who have successfully managed to break through pharma’s glass ceiling.  Whilst Ryan has never found being a female entrepreneur to be an obstacle, she does state how “female-led start-ups get much less capital investment,” but that the reality is “there are far less women seeking such investment.”

“It might not always be the problem that women are being overlooked, it’s also that more women should come forward,” she says.

With the pharma industry still experiencing a gender gap, particularly amongst those in leadership positions, Ryan stresses how important it is that systems of support are put in place for underrepresented parties. For Ryan, nowhere has this been more evident than in Ireland.

“Our own Irish government agency, Enterprise Ireland, saw the underrepresentation of women and put in support to encourage it. That is really encouraging because it ensures that to support females coming forward there are supports in place and that can be the first step in getting there,” she says.

That system of support is crucial, Ryan believes, when it’s applied to a company’s own personnel.

“The most successful teams, whether they’re executive teams or technical teams, have a variety of perspectives. But it’s not enough to have a diverse team; you also need to support the members of the team,” she says.

That level of support is something Ryan says she’s been lucky enough to receive throughout her career and in turn she now feels responsible for passing on that mentorship to the members of Shorla Pharma.

“It’s encouragement to not only establish a career but to build it so they too get to the C-suite position or to a level where they’re on the executive team, because I think that’s really important,” she says.