NextCure Featured on Business Spotlight Video Series
NextCure, an emerging global leader in developing novel immunomedicines to treat cancer and other immune-related diseases, was recently featured on Prince George’s County Economic Development Corporation’s (PGCEDC) Business Spotlight video series.
NextCure’s headquarters is located in the northern part of Prince George’s County, Maryland in Beltsville. The company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ (NXTC) and is one of the more exciting, faster growing biopharma companies in Maryland and the entire BioHealth Capital Region (BHCR).
The Business Spotlight video segment features PGCEDC’s Business Development Director Larry Hentz doing a deep dive interview and a tour of the company’s art-inspired headquarters with NextCure’s President and CEO, Michael Richman.
“We continue to work with cutting edge technology to develop the next generation of immunomedicines that we hope will help patients and improve the available care for them. Anyone who enters the field of science is somewhat a dreamer and an imagineer; the science brings you in because you’re naturally curious and then you become even more curious with respect to doing more science and doing better for society and to do good for people,” Richman said during the video interview.
“Our job is to take the tools and technologies and apply them in a focused way…what gets us up in the morning is this passion for wanting to help others, that desire to get answers …when we built this organization we wanted to bring comfort to the discomfort that comes with having a lot of questions and not enough answers. We wanted to create an environment that’s stimulating and where people can work as teams to find solutions,” he added.
If you’re looking to join a leading-edge, up-and-coming immunomedicines company with a noble mission, check out the full Business Spotlight below to get a flavor for what NextCure does and the inspiring and always interesting workplace culture that makes the organization unique.
NXTC went public in May 2019, raising approximately $90M. Since that time the company has grown from 44 to approximately 90 employees as of early 2022. The company was founded by Dr. Lieping Chen, the United Technologies Corporation Professor in Cancer Research and Professor of Immunobiology, Dermatology and Medicine (Medical Oncology) at Yale University. Chen is also the Co-Director of the Cancer Immunology Program at Yale Cancer Center.
“We started NextCure because we’d seen some major breakthroughs in immunotherapy and cancer, but what led us to be concerned was that 60-70% of people were not responding to these new drugs. Even in people who responded, their disease progressed,” shared Richman to Hentz.
“We are here to do our best to cure cancer,” he added.
The company’s proprietary discovery platform is called Functional, Integrated, NextCure Discovery in Immuno-Oncology, or FIND-IO. FIND-IO is being deployed to identify novel immune targets so the company can develop and commercialize therapies for patients not responding to existing therapies or whose cancer types are not addressed by the current standards of care.
NXTC is focused on finding and targeting novel targets, not on tweaking or improving existing standard of care therapeutic approaches.
Focusing research and investment on novel immune targets is where higher risk meets the potential for higher reward. This approach is challenging as development and approval timelines can be longer and the overall risk profile is higher. However, NXTC’s strategy of identifying novel immune targets and developing immunomedicines around these targets could yield far greater benefits to patients in areas of great unmet medical need.
In other words, the company has embraced and is invigorated by traveling a more challenging road because they believe they can find a way to help improve the lives of the 60-70% of non-responsive patients that currently have no alternative therapy that works for their needs.
NXTC is on a mission to help these patients and continues to build its team and expand its in-house capabilities as the organization ramps up to accommodate anticipated future growth. The company also recently brought on a new VP of Human Resources, Stacy Rollinger, to lead this function and to drive talent acquisition activities.
You can learn more about NextCure’s mission, culture and current job openings by checking out the company’s BioBuzz Featured Employer page.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Steve brings nearly twenty years of experience in marketing and content creation to the WorkForce Genetics team. He loves writing engaging content and working with partners, companies, and individuals to share their unique stories and showcase their work. Steve holds a BA in English from Providence College and an MA in American Literature from Montclair State University. He lives in Frederick, Maryland with his wife, two sons, and the family dog.
