About Us

Upendra Marathi was motivated to create 7 Hills Pharma by the tragic death of a friend’s child who, suffering from leukemia, was unable to find a matched donor for bone marrow transplant, ultimately resulting in the child's death. In became clear to Upendra that significant racial, ethnic, and socio-economic disparities exist in accessing such curative therapies and that a cost effective, easily accessible means to safe and effective stem cell transplantation was urgently needed.

At the same time, a team of scientists at the Texas Heart Institute, led by Drs. Peter Vanderslice, Darren Woodside, and Ronald Biediger were developing small molecule drugs to promote stem cell therapy. This team had a long and successful track record developing drugs that inhibit a family of cell adhesion molecules called “integrins” that are critical to the trafficking of cells to specific tissues. This time, however, they were attempting to develop drugs that activate these same receptors instead of inhibiting them in order to promote stem cell trafficking and engraftment into tissues. Armed with a wealth of knowledge on the binding dynamics of integrin receptors, they determined that a few tweaks to the structure would convert an integrin inhibitor into an integrin activator. In this way, they invented the first compound ever reported to specifically activate VLA-4, the integrin predominantly involved in homing stem cells to the bone marrow.

7 Hills Pharma was co-founded by Dr. Marathi and members of the Texas Heart team around this first-in-class technology. Soon, they discovered that these novel compounds could also be used to augment any antigen-specific immune response. This concept was based in part on the pioneering work of Dr. Woodside showing that these integrins are key components in driving T cell activation. This insight ultimately led to our first clinical-stage program, advancing alintegimod to overcome aPD-1 resistance.

We have since returned to our original motivation for 7 Hills with our 7HP935 program, leveraging selective integrin activation to create improved, cost-effective, treatment options for patients with acute leukemias and genetic disorders of the bone marrow.