Funds will help company reach preclinical validation for lead candidate in glioblastoma – an aggressive and lethal brain tumor – and in other cancer indications.
Barcelona, Spain, April 27, 2016 – Peptomyc, a drug development company specialized in the discovery of new cancer treatments, today announces it has completed a Seed Funding Round of €1M. Healthequity SCR, a Spanish investment fund, led the round. The fundraising was also supported by a syndicate of business angels and investors.
“We are very happy to have closed this seed round and we are extremely grateful for the support we received from HealthEquity, our institutions Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology and ICREA, and our generous Business Angels,” said Laura Soucek, CEO and co-founder of Peptomyc. “With Peptomyc, we are commited to making a difference in the treatment of patients affected by cancer and this seed round is a huge step forward on our path towards the clinic”.
Luis Pareras and Albert Ferrer, directors of Healthequity, commented: “Peptomyc is a very promising company in the field of cancer treatment. Its strong preclinical results and novel mechanism of action, developed by Dr. Laura Soucek’s team, convinced us of the value of its research. We are very confident in its glioblastoma candidate and we look forward to the next stages of development for this product.”
The funds raised will be used to complete the preclinical studies, moving Peptomyc’s candidate closer to clinical use, and to develop other potential oncological indications for its protein therapeutics.
About Peptomyc’s approach to treating cancer
Peptomyc has adopted a different strategy to attack cancer cells, based on the inhibition of the oncoprotein Myc, which is found deregulated in the majority of human cancers. Although Myc plays a central role in cancer there is currently no Myc inhibitor in the market. Peptomyc designed a new generation of anti-Myc inhibitors based on a molecule called Omomyc and the goal is to develop these into clinically viable therapeutics for the treatment of cancer patients. Early testing will be directed towards glioblastoma, a disease that responds poorly to standard therapy and that has a dire prognosis. Dr. Soucek’s group has previously validated Myc inhibition by Omomyc as a therapeutic strategy against glioblastoma in preclinical mouse models.
Peptomyc was founded in December 2014 by Dr. Laura Soucek, Dr. Marie-Eve Beaulieu, VHIO and ICREA, with the mission to develop a new generation of cell penetrating peptides targeting the Myc oncoprotein for cancer treatment.
About HealthEquity
HealthEquity is a Spanish venture capital firm investing in early-stage companies in the healthcare sector, with a special focus on biotechnology and medical devices. Founded by the Barcelona Medical Association and the financial group Riva y Garcia, HealthEquity is looking for projects to bring successful innovative life science companies to the marketplace and to foster the Catalan and Spanish biotech ecosystem.