From Bench to Bedside: EpiCure and the m⁴Award 2025
A Success Story by Yasmin Gärtner (PhD student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)
As part of my doctoral research, I had the chance to become a core team member of EpiCure – a research project at the Institute of Chemical Epigenetics Munich (ICEM) at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) that is preparing for its spin-off into an independent company. Together with Prof Dr Thomas Carell, Dr Matthias Heiss, Dr Mike Rothe, and Jun-Prof Dr. Franziska Traube, we are working to bring a novel, improved cancer therapeutic to market for patients suffering from hematological neoplasms such as Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) and Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS).
Our lead candidate, Carbacitabine (CAB), is a next-generation hypomethylating agent with a targeted structural modification that confers exceptional stability against degradation – resulting in 100-fold reduced toxicity compared to current standards of care. Beyond its improved safety profile, CAB demonstrates superior efficacy and, critically, the ability to overcome resistance mechanisms that render existing therapies ineffective for many patients. Patent protection has been secured across multiple jurisdictions, with further applications pending internationally.
A major milestone for EpiCure was winning the m⁴Award 2025, a pre-seed competition presented by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy and coordinated by BioM Biotech Cluster Development GmbH. At the BayOConnect conference in Munich, our team had the privilege of receiving this recognition among a highly competitive field of applicants. The 500,000-euro prize has already funded critical preclinical studies including ADME/DMPK analyses characterizing CAB's pharmacological behavior, with remaining funds supporting further studies to complete the regulatory groundwork for first-in-human trials. This funding brings us significantly closer to our goal of offering leukemia patients a safer and more effective therapeutic option and marks a decisive step toward EpiCure's upcoming spin-off.
