Recently we had a conversation with Shardule Shah, CEO and founder of Lime Therapeutics, a company dedicated to advancing therapies for diseases related to dysfunctional lipid metabolism. By leveraging their innovative LipidSense platform, Lime Therapeutics is transforming the way we understand and treat conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurodegenerative disorders. Shardule shared insights into their company’s journey, their groundbreaking approach to drug discovery, and the challenges they’ve overcome along the way. Their passion for innovation and unique career path offer valuable lessons for entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the biotech industry.
What problem is Lime Therapeutics trying to address?
Lime Therapeutics is looking to address the problem of dysfunctional lipid or fat metabolism across the human body and how that manifests itself in diseases ranging from many types of cancers, cardiometabolic disorders like atherosclerosis, and neurodegenerative disorders. Currently, there is a lack of companies that are looking into ways to find innovative therapies to target dysfunctional lipid metabolism. So at the end of the day, Lime Therapeutics is looking to be the lipids company.
Your technology is called LipidSense. Could you briefly describe how that works?
LipidSense is a technology that allows us to measure how lipids are flowing through a cell. And the reason that this is important is because if you can make this particular measurement, you can get an idea of how different therapies that are being developed can correct that rate of flow. As a very particular example, if you want to decrease the rate of lipid flow through a cancer cell that has started to metabolize or use a lot of lipids, then we can test various drugs, including the ones that we make ourselves, using this platform to see if it has the kind of effect that we're looking to see. LipidSense is a platform technology that allows us to measure lipid flow. But how we're utilizing that technology is allowing us to better understand how to develop drugs for diseases with dysfunctional lipid flow. Some of the most exciting things about this technology is that it's also applicable to basic science.
What are your future goals for Lime Therapeutics?
Our goal in the near future is to achieve human proof of concept by getting one of our drugs to have success in an early-stage human clinical trial. We want for the drug to go all the way through regulatory approval and be able to be used by patients, but for right now the immediate goal for the company is to demonstrate that in a clinical trial.
What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced as a company and how did you overcome them?
The main challenge in the company’s inception was our business strategy. Number one, the challenge was should we try to sell the technology to other companies and behave more as a service provider? That's how many platform companies evolve. Or should we utilize this as our internal—as Bob Langer at MIT would call it for us when we met with him—“secret sauce” for drug discovery. So honing the business model was a big challenge. Another challenge is ensuring that the right folks are joining the team. And these are people that have to have a startup mentality, a startup mindset, really understand what it takes to get things done. So I think that the way that we've overcome that challenge is by honing our interview process. Number one, utilizing feedback from our internal network. And really giving the team ownership in the very beginning of the company in terms of the direction of the company, and requisite salary and equity compensation. I think that those are the ways that we've been able to tackle that challenge.
How has your particular career path, in getting an MBA and a PhD, influenced how you think about problems? And have you gained any unique insights from your two different kinds of experiences?
I would take that question in other ways, not just two insights, because I received a wonderful education at CWRU from my bachelor's degree. And so honing my biochemistry skill set, taking part in great leadership opportunities in the Interfraternity Congress and in the Case Western Orchestra, but that helped to contribute to who I am today. My master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania helped to contribute to who I am today. So I think it goes broader beyond just the PhD perspective, which was very valuable. And the MBA I got from Harvard, which was also valuable. I truly feel like each stage of my journey, while I may not have realized it at the time, has been influential in making me who I am today. And so it's one of these things where you don't know the lesson you're going to learn until you step out of that role. And so I'm curious to know, as this journey progresses, what are the next lessons that I'm going to learn?
Do you have any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?
For aspiring entrepreneurs, there's a couple of things. Number one, if you believe that you are genuinely on the cusp of a new idea or want to team up with somebody that has a new idea, then go for it. The world needs more entrepreneurs. They need people to really, really foster their ideas and make change. It could be in any segment in the world. So, I think that's less number one. And number two, I would say that be really good about crafting and honing your message, because if you have this brilliant idea but nobody understands what you're doing, then it's going to be hard for people to buy into what you're doing. So, I think that it's the beautiful combination of a breakthrough idea with messaging that's ready to go, and that messaging takes practice. I'm still working on mine, and I think those two combinations together will make a very powerful entrepreneur.
Lime Therapeutics is one of the CWRU-founded ventures in the CWRU Alumni Venture Fund portfolio.
This article was written by CWRU Alumni Venture Fund Fellow Brendan Sheehan, MD-PhD class of 2030.