Myricx Bio’s therapies include treatments for breast cancer, lung cancer and colorectal cancer.
Myricx Bio, a cancer treatment spin-out from the Francis Crick Institute and Imperial College London (ICL), has raised £90m in Series A funding to advance its novel cancer treatment into clinical development.
The investment will help the company develop and advance its therapies into clinical trials to treat various types of tumors, including breast, lung and colon cancer.
The round, the largest Series A funding to date by an EU academic biotechnology company, was co-led by life sciences investors Novo Holdings and Abingworth, with participation from additional investors including British Patient Capital, Cancer Research Horizons and Eli Lilly and Company, as well as founding investors Brandon Capital and Sofinova Partners.
The spin-out is focused on discovering and developing a novel class of payloads, antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), which contain antibodies that bind to the surface of specific tumours to deliver drugs to the target.
The drug works by selectively inhibiting an enzyme called N-myristoyltransferase, which works by modifying proteins and plays a key role in several specific processes that cancer cells use to survive.
“Antibodies have become a mature form of therapy,” explained Professor Ed Tait, co-founder of Myricx, GSK Professor of Chemical Biology in the ICL Department of Chemistry, and Satellite Group Leader at the Crick.
“The drug acts at a specific point in cell biology, linking it to dozens of different pathways, many of which are more important in cancer cells than in normal cells,” Tait added. “And whereas most ADC payloads are fast-acting, our drug takes up to several days to start killing cancer cells, giving normal tissue time to recover.”
So far, preclinical investigations of the inhibitors have shown well-tolerated, complete and durable tumor regression in several animal models of solid tumors and in patient-derived organoid models.
Myrix hopes that these potentially new therapies will be able to act more selectively on cancer cells to prevent cancer recurrence, targeting dormant and senescent cells over the long term and without toxic side effects.
