Date: 2013-06-25
Type of information: Grant
Company: CellCentric (UK)
Investors: Biomedical Catalyst Fund (UK) Morningside Venture Investments (Hong Kong) Providence Investment Company (UK) Rainbow Seed Fund (UK)
Amount: £4.3 million (€ 5 million)
Funding type: grant
Planned used: The grant has been awarded to take prostate cancer programme through to clinical candidates.
Others: * On June 25, 2013, CellCentric has announced that a new investment coupled with a major award from the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board, will provide funding for over two years to conduct lead optimisation and clinical candidate generation on inhibitors against a specific deubiquitinase target, demonstrated to play a key role in the progression of prostate cancer. The award has triggered significant additional funding from Morningside Venture Investments and Providence Investment Company, as well as from Rainbow Seed Fund.
The company is concentrating its efforts on an unexplored drug target that is shown to be critical in prostate cancer. The deubiquitinase (DUB) enzyme controls androgen receptor signalling, key particularly in the most aggressive forms of the disease. Early results suggest that the approach could overcome many of the drug resistance mechanisms which limit the clinical benefit of recently approved therapeutic agents. The new funding will be used to generate further lead series inhibitors and optimise those already identified. CellCentric has developed a number of proprietary medicinal chemistry screening formats that are enabling success.
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
