A spinout of the University of Southern California, Pivotal Biosciences, is benefiting from the approval of a $3.5M drug development project that was just approved by the National Cancer Institute, for developing a treatment for metastatic melanoma and metastatic renal cell carcinoma. According to USC, Alan Epstein, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the firm's Department of Pathology at the USC Keck School of Medicine of USC, just received the $3.5M award from the National Cancer Institute. The technology being developed by Epstein has been licensed to privately held Pivotal Biosciences, which is headed by Dimitri Villard.