Cage Bio- Delivering Therapeutics via Skin using Ionic Liquids

Nitin Joshi is the CEO and co-founder of CAGE Bio, a clinical-stage company using an ionic liquid platform to deliver drugs into the skin while keeping them out of the bloodstream. He is also a rare kind of founder: someone who spent decades inside pharma companies like Elan and ALZA before building anything of his own, and who has now done it three times.

We start with the science. What an ionic liquid actually is, why a deep eutectic system solves the biocompatibility problems that stalled earlier work in the field, and why local concentration with minimal systemic exposure changes what is possible in dermatology. Then we get to CGB-600, a topical DNA aptamer. Pushing a ten kilodalton oligonucleotide through skin was considered functionally impossible ten years ago. Nitin explains how that program came together, and the harder question underneath it: how a founder knows when to trust a platform's reach and when to stay disciplined.

The second half is about how he builds. Incline Therapeutics, which he pulled out of a shelved ALZA program and took to market before its acquisition by The Medicines Company. inTUMO, carved out of solid-tumor work. What living through two exits taught him about designing a therapeutics company for acquisition from day one without distorting the science. And how roughly $18M has carried CAGE Bio to two Phase 2 assets, a program headed toward Phase 3, and a preclinical collaboration with Mayo Clinic.

This episode has great lessons both for aspiring entrepreneurs building therapeutics startups and a special treat for a mid-career scientist sitting on an idea and wondering whether the window has closed.

Shownotes

• https://cagebio.com/

• Problems being solved at Cage Bio

• Challenges delivering to skin & issues with systemic delivery to treat skin diseases

• What are ionic liquids and how they are being used to treat skin diseases

• Collaboration between three labs: UC Santa Barbara, Northern Arizona University, Los Alamos

• History of ionic liquids and their evolution to deliver drugs (Choline+Geranic acid)

• Invention vs formulation

• Mitragotri Lab for drug delivery at Harvard University

• 3 Immuno-dermatology programs- Atopic dermatitis, Alopecia Areata, Vitiligo

• Building the company in Dallas-Fortworth

• Delivering 10KDa Oligonucleotide

• Experienced biotech executives founding startups: Founding story

• Incline Therapeutics, IONSYS, and rescuing a shelved program

• inTUMO and the loco-regional approach to solid tumors

• Designing a therapeutics company for acquisition

• Platform play vs Product company

• Discipline in fundraising- generally lower cost in dermatology and focus on efficiency

• Fund raising story:Capital efficiency on roughly $18M

• Building in Dallas-Fort Worth

• Unlearning lessons from working in the industry vs lessons that helped as an experienced operator transitioning to founder CEO position

• Advice for the forty-five-year-old scientist with an idea

• Let the team take the credit for wins and take the credit for the failures