Enedra Therapeutics secures financing to advance drug discovery programmes from its proprietary CASPAROV platform for difficult to treat cancers

The financing round was supported by KU Leuven’s Centre for Drug Design and Discovery (CD3), o2h Ventures, and follow-on investor Cancer Research Horizons, all of which in addition bring significant experience in target validation and drug discovery and development.

Enedra is building its bioinformatics platform and enabling a portfolio of targets towards drug discovery, aiming to create personalised medicines that address the large unmet needs of patients with advanced, complex, and heterogeneous tumours, a formidable medical need in cancer treatment. The next steps for the company are to progress the drug discovery programmes and the validation of patient selection biomarkers and to expand the leadership team ahead of raising the next round of financing.

Advanced cancers become increasingly genetically complex and heterogeneous. Chromosomal instability is one of the drivers of this heterogeneity and enables cancer to adapt to therapeutics and external stresses, resulting in tumours where all cells carry an imbalanced, reshuffled, and unstable genome. Due to an unstable genome, cancer cells rely on survival mechanisms that are not essential for normal cells. Leveraging this insight, Enedra harnesses the power of its proprietary bioinformatics platform, CASPAROV, to uncover drug targets crucial for cancer cell survival and specific biomarkers that predict treatment response.

Enedra welcomes CD3 to its investor base and is happy that Patrick Chaltin, the Managing Director of CD3, will join the Board of Directors. The Centre for Drug Design and Discovery (CD3), based in Leuven (Belgium), is an investment fund and drug discovery unit created to drive the translation of innovative research to the clinic. They have already delivered multiple successful drug candidates in clinical development and invested in a promising portfolio of companies.

O2h Ventures also joins as an investor. O2h is a key supporter of Enedra’s Innovate UK Future Economy Investor Partnerships grant. The fund invests in the most promising biotech therapeutic opportunities in the UK at their early stage.

Cancer Research Horizons, who in partnership with Deep Science Ventures supported the creation of Enedra Therapeutics, continued with further backing of Enedra’s new round.

Andreas Ballis, Founder-CEO of Enedra Therapeutics, said: “Such support from our new and existing seasoned investors and from Innovate UK signifies the increasing interest around what our technology and team can offer in tackling the challenge of CIN and tumour heterogeneity to bring new therapies for patients with advanced cancer to life. Our experienced team of scientists are already making significant strides in delivering a robust pipeline of these much-needed therapies. The future holds incredible promise, and we are incredibly excited about it.”

Patrick Chaltin, Managing Director of CD3, said: “We are thrilled to support Enedra and its team in these early stages, helping them build a strong, mature drug discovery pipeline. What attracted us to Enedra is the combination of an experienced drug-hunting team and a cutting-edge bioinformatics platform, which together deliver innovative approaches to address high unmet needs in cancer, along with biomarkers that predict treatment response.”

Sunil Shah, CEO of o2h Ventures, said: “We are very excited to support Enedra on this journey, target selection is key in embarking on new drug discovery projects, and the CASPAROV platform for this coupled with the non-dilutive funding award and highly experienced founding and leadership team in developing cancer therapeutics made this attractive.”

ENDS

About Enedra Therapeutics

Enedra Therapeutics is a London-based therapeutics company developing next generation of precision therapies for advanced, genetically heterogeneous cancers.

Enedra leverages CASPAROV, a technology platform that evaluates instability, defines genomic heterogeneity and discovers specific pharmacological targets resulting from it, along with patient-specific biomarkers that predict treatment response.

Enedra’s co-founding team brings extensive expertise in drug discovery, patient biomarker development and their commercial translation and the team is supported by an advisory board with experience spanning oncology drug discovery, computational biology and cancer evolution. Enedra Therapeutics was created through a partnership between Deep Science Ventures and Cancer Research Horizons.

About CD3

The Centre for Drug Design and Discovery (CD3) is an investment fund and drug discovery center created by KU Leuven to drive the translation of innovative research into clinical applications. It provides expert drug discovery capabilities and financial support to academic research groups and small companies to help develop groundbreaking medicines. CD3 has established numerous collaborations with academic institutions, leading to successful partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and has co-created several early-stage biotech companies. For more information, please visit www.cd3.be.

About Deep Science Ventures

Deep Science Ventures is creating a future where humanity and the planet thrive, combining available scientific knowledge and founder-type scientists into high-impact ventures. Deep Science Ventures operates in 4 sectors: Agriculture, Climate, Computation and Pharmaceuticals, tackling the challenges defining those areas by taking a first-principles approach and partnering with leading institutions.

About Cancer Research Horizons 

Cancer Research Horizons is the innovation engine of Cancer Research UK – the world's largest charitable funder of cancer research. It brings together world-leading minds, bold ideas and the right partners to bridge the gap between academic research and taking drugs to market. It focuses on the tougher, more profound ideas that can lead to true innovation, translating them into effective treatments and diagnostics for cancer patients.

To date, it has played an instrumental role in forming over 70 start-ups. It has helped bring 14 cancer drugs to market, borne out of Cancer Research UK's pioneering research. Through these drugs, it has enabled in excess of 6 million courses of treatment for cancer patients across the world.

With access to Cancer Research UK's network of 4,000 exceptional researchers, and £400m of annual research spend, it is a powerful partner in the fight to conquer cancer. By uniting its commercial partnerships and therapeutic innovation capabilities, Cancer Research Horizons is uniquely placed to support translational funding, entrepreneurial development, data licensing and collaboration, spin-out creation, and offer a full spectrum of drug discovery and clinical capabilities.

Every penny it makes goes back into funding the next bold steps, to help bring forward the day when all cancers are conquered.

For more information and to get in touch with the team, visit cancerresearchhorizons.com.

About o2h Ventures 

The o2h Ventures ‘Human Health’ SEIS and EIS funds make tax-efficient investments in Pre-Seed and seed-stage companies that address human disease: we fund the development of novel therapeutic treatments; we help build new services and tools offerings throughout the biotech ecosystem, and we spur the creation of software & artificial intelligence that will change healthcare.

The o2h team are leaders in the biotech community and have been actively involved as investors, holding various board/industry positions as well as being engaged in grassroots scientific activity for over 20 years. o2h Ventures operates from their proprietary 2.7 acre Mill SciTech Park where they are developing a unique model for incubating small life science companies.

For more information or to invest in the fund, please visit www.o2hventures.com 

About Innovate UK

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, is creating a better future by inspiring, involving and investing in businesses developing life-changing innovations.

We provide targeted sectors with expertise, facilities and funding to test, demonstrate and evolve their ideas, driving UK productivity and economic growth. Join our network and communities of innovators to realise the potential of your ideas and accelerate business growth. Innovate UK: inspiring business innovation.

Contact

Andres Ballis
CEO, Enedra Therapeutics
[email protected]