Lab Rats series: Activating ‘natural killers’ for cancer with Zumutor
Mumbai: When Kavitha Iyer Rodrigues chose novel drug discovery over scaling a biosimilars business, she took on a much harder problem: developing novel biologics in an ecosystem built largely around generics and biosimilars. More than a decade later, her second startup, Zumutor Biologics, is testing whether that bet can deliver scientific progress—and returns for investors.
“Scale was not my cup of tea,” said Iyer. Her preference for research and development (R&D) led her away from expanding her first venture and towards the riskier pursuit of novel drug discovery.
The Bengaluru-founded company’s lead candidate, ZM008, is in phase 1 clinical trials in the US. It is designed to help the immune system’s natural killer (NK) cells recognize and attack cancer cells more effectively, targeting a pathway being explored for its potential against solid tumours. NK cell therapeutics are a promising new frontier in cancer care, and have been attracting billion-dollar deals globally.
For Zumutor, the next challenge is to turn that initial promise into a drug programme that can attract a global pharmaceutical partner.
“It was a bold move, but thankfully not foolish,” Iyer said, who founded Zumutor in 2013, when original biologics research was still a nascent area in India.
The company has raised more than $30 million in patient capital. In drug discovery, where development can take years and outcomes are often binary, the pressure to establish a route to returns is mounting. Zumutor is accelerating its clinical programmes while pursuing licensing deals with global biopharmaceutical companies over the next two years.
The early evidence
ZM008 targets an emerging area of cancer research: activating NK cells, a component of the body’s immune system. These white blood cells patrol the body, recognizing and destroying virus-infected and cancerous cells.
Unlike T cells, which use highly specific receptors to recognize particular antigens, NK cells integrate signals from a range of activating and inhibitory receptors to determine whether a cell should be killed. Cancer cells can exploit inhibitory pathways to evade immune surveillance and escape NK cell-mediated killing.
Although NK cell approaches have shown promise in blood cancers, solid tumours pose a greater challenge because their complex, immunosuppressive microenvironment can impede immune responses. This is the problem Zumutor is seeking to address.
ZM008 is not a cell therapy: Zumutor is not engineering NK cells for infusion into patients. Instead, the candidate is a fully human monoclonal antibody designed to release an inhibitory signal, enhancing NK cell activation and anti-tumour activity.
Zumutor is also evaluating ZM008 in combination with toripalimab, an established PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor. The aim is to explore whether activating the NK-cell pathway alongside T-cell-mediated anti-tumour immunity can improve responses in solid tumours.
The phase 1 programme has reported early clinical signals, including in renal cell carcinoma, while colorectal and head and neck cancers are among the areas of interest. Non-small cell lung cancer has also been added to the clinical programme.
ZM008 is being tested at three sites in the US. Zumutor plans to conduct trials in India next and expects to begin global phase 2 trials next year in regions including India, Iyer said.
Why Zumutor moved to the US
The decision to pursue original drug discovery came after Iyer had spent years working in India's large molecules space. A former Biocon employee, she spent seven years working across enzymes, insulin and early antibody development programmes before launching InbioPro Solutions, a biosimilars startup, in 2007.
Biosimilars are developed to be highly similar to an existing reference biologic, drawing on the scientific foundation established by the original drug. Novel biologics require a different approach: researchers must identify and validate new molecular targets before advancing candidates through preclinical and clinical testing.
That work depends on a deep knowledge ecosystem, Iyer’s experience at Zumutor would suggest, and India was still developing one.
India’s pharmaceutical industry has built a substantial ecosystem for generic drug development and, over recent decades, has expanded its capabilities and infrastructure for biosimilars. Original drug discovery, however, depends on the depth of the scientific knowledge base available to researchers, said Manish Diwan, head of the Birac-RDI fund, which falls under the Centre’s ₹1 trillion Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Initiative and is managed by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (Birac).
“Core innovation gets influenced fundamentally by what is the knowledge base you have in the R&D sector,” said Diwan.
Zumutor responded by shifting its corporate base to the US in 2016, incorporating there while retaining its Bengaluru company as a wholly owned subsidiary. Iyer credited the move with accelerating the company’s R&D.
Over 10 months, “we shopped extensively. We took advice from the best over there. We asked the right questions of what is the pipeline a company like us should build? How much money would it take? How long would it take? What’s the patent landscape? Would Big Pharma swallow us? Would the competition be too high?” Iyer said.
The team returned to its investor board with a plan to focus on immuno-oncology, specifically NK cells.
Path to returns
Iyer’s first venture had secured early-stage funding from Erasmic Venture Fund, which merged with Accel in 2008. Its successful scale-up and buyout helped get investors on board for a pure innovation play.
Zumutor secured $6 million seed funding from Accel Partners, alongside Aarin Capital, IDG Ventures and KITVEN. Most recently, it raised $7.3 million in June in a pre-Series B round led by Accel and Bharat Innovation Fund.
The commercial strategy now rests on moving ZM008 through clinical development while finding partners willing to license the drug in specific territories. Zumutor is in discussions with multiple global biopharmaceutical companies and expects region-specific licensing opportunities to emerge around 2027-28, Iyer said.
For two other early-stage candidates, the company would prefer co-development arrangements to taking on the cost of developing them entirely in-house.