Immuneering heads to the Dog Patch

October 9, 2009 by MassDevice staff

Immuneering Corp. is headed to the Dog Patch, the Cambridge, Mass.-based startup incubator run by Polaris Venture Partners.

Co-founder and CEO Ben Zeskind told MassDevice that his firm, which uses existing hardware and its proprietary technology to help oncologists predict whether cancer patients will respond to certain treatments, earned a two- to three-month stay at the incubator while it works on setting up a clinical trial.

"It's really a great arrangement. It's all the physical things you really need to move forward with your business, but more importantly they provide you with a great environment," Zeskind told us. "It's really a perfect spot for us for the next few months, because we're putting the finishing touches on our plans for the clinical trial. It's still early days, but the folks from Polaris have been really good about stopping by. We're getting to know a lot of people at Polaris and having them get to know our company as well."

There's no formal financial arrangement between the company and the VC firm, he added, but "it's sort of implicit that they choose startups that they're potentially interested in investing in."

Once the arrangement at the Dog Patch runs out, Zeskind said Immuneering will look for office space in Cambridge's Kendall Square and in Boston.

"There are a couple of different places where we might end up. There are a lot of good options in Kendall Square, and that's certainly a good place for biotech," he said. "The city of Boston also has a good program to encourage life science companies to locate in Boston, so we've been talking with them as well."

Here's a video of Zeskind's "elevator pitch" at last week's MassMEDIC 11th Annual Medtech Investors Conference:

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