PolyProx Therapeutics raises £3.4m seed capital to boost new cancer drugs

April 30, 2019 Off By BusinessWire

CAMBRIDGE, England–(BUSINESS WIRE)–lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Cambridge?src=hash” target=”_blank”gt;#Cambridgelt;/agt;–PolyProx Therapeutics, a new biotechnology company focused on the
discovery and development of novel biopharmaceuticals for the treatment
of cancer, today announced that it has raised £3.4m of seed capital.

A spin out of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of
Cambridge, PolyProx Therapeutics is based on over a decade of research
and intellectual property from Founder, Professor Laura Itzhaki’s
laboratory. Professor Itzhaki is joined at PolyProx Therapeutics by
serial Cambridge biotech entrepreneurs Kevin Moulder as Chief Operating
Officer and Andrew Sandham as Executive Chairman.

PolyProx Therapeutics will develop a new class of drugs, called
Polyproxin™ molecules, that are able to selectively target tumour cells
and trigger the natural degradation machinery contained within the cell
to arrest tumour growth.

Polyproxin™ molecules target disease-causing proteins within tumour
cells and trigger pathways to eliminate these proteins, thereby halting
further growth of the tumour. This approach has the potential to address
cancer targets that have proven untreatable using current technologies,
important in major diseases such as lung, colorectal and pancreatic
cancers. The technology behind this approach uses protein scaffolds to
link a targeting entity at one end and a degradation trigger at the
other, assembled in such a way as to allow access to the tumour cell and
recyclable activity.

The financing, which was co-led by Cambridge Innovation Capital plc
(CIC), RT Capital and Cambridge Enterprise, will support research
operations to validate the technology across a range of tumour targets
over the next two years.

Professor Laura Itzhaki, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, PolyProx
Therapeutics commented: “We are thrilled to have closed the seed
round, and this will enable us to grow the PolyProx team and further
develop our technology over the next two years. Our platform,
which harnesses the cell’s natural protein degradation pathways, should
allow access to many hard-to-drug targets and enable screening of
molecules against these targets more quickly than existing approaches.
We are excited to continue the discovery process in our labs at the
Babraham Research Campus as we enter the next phase of our development.”

Christine Martin, Investment Manager at Cambridge Enterprise, said: “It
is exciting to help spin out Professor Itzhaki’s outstanding and
impactful research from the University. This is a great technology that
is poised to address the elusive ‘difficult to drug’ section of the
proteome to ultimately bring patient benefit.”

Sohaib Mir, Principal at Cambridge Innovation Capital, added: “PolyProx’s
technology offers the potential to broaden the druggable proteome,
thereby encompassing a range of highly validated therapeutic targets for
which there are no existing drugs. This exciting new company,
underpinned by world-class science and deep intellectual property, is
characteristic of businesses emanating from the Cambridge ecosystem. We
look forward to working with PolyProx’s experienced team as the company
advances.”

PolyProx Therapeutics is based at the Babraham Research Campus and is
currently recruiting. For more information please visit: www.polyprox.com