IU professor launches Indianapolis startup Kovina Therapeutics to pursue HPV-related cancer treatments
Dr. Elliot Androphy, a professor in the IU School of Medicine, founded Indianapolis-based Kovina Therapeutics to develop small-molecule medicines that target HPV proteins and kill infected cells. IU has co-owned related patents and the startup has received university seed support, venture backing and NIH grants.
Dr. Elliot Androphy, a professor in the Department of Dermatology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, founded Kovina Therapeutics, an Indianapolis-based bioscience company focused on developing novel medicines to treat human papillomavirus (HPV) infections and HPV-associated cancers.
Researchers in Androphy’s lab and collaborators at IU discovered small drug-like molecules that block a key viral protein (E6) that disables the tumor-suppressor p53; those molecules induce death of HPV-infected cells and are the basis of Kovina’s therapeutic program.
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- Indiana University: IU physician researcher turns entrepreneur in fight against HPV-related cancers ↗
- Kovina Therapeutics Receives Grant from NIH to Advance Human Papillomavirus Premalignant Infection Treatments - Kovina Therapeutics ↗
Source date recorded as September 17, 2026 at 4:00 AM EDT. A sourced news brief; no independent staff reporting is implied. Prepared with AI assistance; source-dependent claims remain attributed in the article.
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