Our Story

It started with a question that shouldn't have an answer

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Dr. Mario DiPaola’s mother was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. He watched her go through treatment after treatment. First the standard chemotherapy. Then newer targeted therapies. Each worked for a few months—five, maybe six—until the cancer returned.

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He kept asking himself a simple but devastating question:

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Why do we keep hitting the same wall?
We block proteins. The cancer adapts.
We switch drugs. The cancer adapts again.
There had to be a different approach.

 

The degraders company

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Mario founded Therabene in March 2020 to solve that problem.

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Traditional cancer drugs block proteins. They bind to the target and stop it from working. But the protein remains. The cell can make more. And the cancer quickly finds a workaround.

 

We don’t block proteins. We eliminate them.

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Our degraders tag cancer-driving proteins like CDK9 and send them to the cell’s own disposal system.
No protein → no signal.
No signal → the tumor cannot sustain itself.

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It’s a fundamentally different mechanism—one designed to stay a step ahead of cancer.

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Proof in the lab

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We tested this approach in mice by introducing aggressive cancer cells and treating them with our lead compound, TB-008.

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The result:
tumors shrank — and stayed small.

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Because degraders remove the protein entirely, the cancer cannot adapt around it.

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Since then, we’ve expanded our pipeline to four programs targeting CDK9 and c-Myc, and we are advancing TB-008 toward IND-enabling studies.

 

What comes next

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Therabene is raising a seed round to advance TB-008 into Phase 1 clinical trials. This next stage includes:

• IND preparation and filing

• GMP manufacturing

• Clinical site setup

• Launch of our first-in-human study

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We’re focused on cancers with some of the greatest unmet need, including triple-negative breast cancer, ovarian cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and myelogenous cancers—diseases where patients often run out of options.

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Join our mission

 

If you’re an investor who sees the potential of targeted protein degradation, we welcome a conversation.
If you’re a patient, family member, or clinician who has seen treatments stop working, we are building for you.

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We are not just developing another drug.
We are redefining how we fight cancer.

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Join us on our journey to bring life-changing therapies to patients who need them most.

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