RIANA Therapeutics signs license agreement with Vetmeduni and expands team
In spring 2023, RIANA Therapeutics, a spin-off of Vetmeduni, kicked off its operations. With the aim of developing innovative cancer therapeutics, this biotech start-up leverages groundbreaking scientific insights from Vetmeduni's Unit of Functional Cancer Genomics. A significant milestone has now been achieved with the signing of a license and cooperation agreement with the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna.
Vice Rector Otto Doblhoff-Dier, RIANA-CEO Anna Orlova and Vice Rector Manuela Raith.
Thomas Suchanek/Vetmeduni
From left to right: Rector Petra Winter, Christine Ruckenbauer, Anna Orlova, Richard Moriggl, Vice Rector Otto Doblhoff-Dier and Vice Rector Manuela Raith.
Thomas Suchanek/Vetmeduni
Vice Rector Otto Doblhoff-Dier expressed his satisfaction with the successful transfer of Vetmeduni's technologies into practical applications and praised the accomplishments of the RIANA Therapeutics team: "Every spin-off requires intensive scientific and organizational work, which the team has handled remarkably and with great professionalism."
By finalizing the license agreement with Vetmeduni, Anna Orlova, co-founder, inventor, and CEO of RIANA, can celebrate a major success. The agreement grants the company exclusive worldwide rights to use the knowledge and findings on a platform technology for drug discovery that Orlova and her co-founder Richard Moriggl have developed at Vetmeduni over the past years. Additionally, RIANA gains access to office and laboratory facilities at the University Campus in Floridsdorf, Vienna, through a cooperation agreement with Vetmeduni. This allowed the young company to start its work without delay shortly after its establishment in April 2023.
Since May 2023, Anna Orlova, a passionate cancer researcher and entrepreneur, has been supported by Christine Ruckenbauer. With her nearly 20 years of expertise in technology transfer at Vetmeduni and her experience as the CEO of Vetmeduni's research holding, where she successfully accompanied several spin-off companies since 2010, Ruckenbauer brings valuable contributions to the team. "After having mentored the RIANA team in my role at Vetmeduni for several years, I am thrilled to now have the opportunity to directly contribute to the company," says Ruckenbauer.
RIANA Therapeutics was founded in February 2023 as a spin-off of Vetmeduni in Vienna by Anna Orlova, Richard Moriggl, and Oliver Szolar, an experienced entrepreneur in the biotech industry. The technological foundation is based on a proprietary platform technology for the discovery of compounds that target cancer-promoting protein-protein interactions (PPI), enabling a reliable search for inhibitors that block the formation of specific oncogenic PPIs. Building upon this novel proprietary technology, the team led by Orlova is working on developing new compounds specifically targeting Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), as well as blood cancers and certain types of solid tumors in general.
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