Lewis Bender - CEO, Intensity Therapeutics - Turning Tumors Into Their Own Immunotherapies

Lewis Bender is CEO and Founder of Intensity Therapeutics ( https://intensitytherapeutics.com/ ), a clinical-stage biotechnology company whose mission is to help patients live longer, higher quality lives by discovering, developing, and commercializing first-in-class cancer drugs that attenuate tumors with minimal side effects, while training the patient’s own immune system to fight the cancer. 

Intensity’s novel engineered chemistry (lead candidate INT230-6) enables aqueous cytotoxic-containing drug formulations to mix and saturate a tumor's dense, high-fat, pressurized environment following direct intra-tumoral injection. As a result of the saturation, Intensity's clinical trials have demonstrated the ability of INT230-6 to kill tumors and elicit an adaptive immune response within days of injection, representing a new approach to cancer cell death that holds the potential to shift the treatment paradigm and turn many deadly cancers into chronic diseases, even for malignancies that do not respond to conventional immunotherapy.

Prior to founding Intensity Therapeutics, Mr. Bender was the CEO of Interleukin Genetics, a personalized medicine company. At Interleukin Mr. Bender successfully restructured the Company, increased sales eight-fold, developed a new genetic-based testing platform and partnered with a large insurance provider to initiate studies leading to reimbursement of the Company’s lead product.

Prior to joining Interleukin Genetics, Mr. Bender held numerous positions at Emisphere Technologies, Inc., a drug delivery company specializing in the oral delivery of poorly absorbed molecules. While at Emisphere Mr. Bender held positions as; Interim President & CEO, Chief Technology Officer, Senior Vice President of Business Development, and Vice President of Manufacturing and Process Development. During his career Mr. Bender has partnered with several major pharmaceutical and biotech companies using structures such as joint ventures, licensing and research collaboration agreements.

Mr. Bender has over 25 years of biotech and pharmaceutical experience having led teams taking products from discovery to Phase III for compounds using novel drug delivery techniques. In addition, Mr. Bender has been successful in raising (or helping to raise) capital with institutional investors using several vehicles such as registered direct placements, PIPES, S-3 & S-1 filings, and convertible debt. For Intensity Therapeutics he has raised approximately $13,000,000 in capital with multiple types of investors.

Mr. Bender has both a B.S and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from MIT, an MBA from UPenn’s Wharton School, and an MA in International studies also from UPenn. He spent several years living in Switzerland and speaks French, German and Swiss-German dialect.

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