Left to right - Myricx Bio co-founders Andrew Bell, Roberto Solari, Ed Tate and CTO Robin Carr
Myricx Bio, a cancer therapy spinout based on research carried out at the Francis Crick Institute and Imperial, has raised £90 million ($114 million) in Series A Financing to move its novel treatments for a range of different tumour types, including breast, lung and colorectal cancer, into clinical development.
The investment is among the largest Series A rounds ever raised by a European academic biotech spinout.
The round was co-led by life science investors Novo Holdings and Abingworth. Additional new investors British Patient Capital, Cancer Research Horizons and Eli Lilly and Company also participated, alongside founding investors Brandon Capital and Sofinnova Partners.
Myricx is focused on the discovery and development of a completely novel class of payloads for antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). This approach involves using antibodies that bind to the surface of specific tumour types to deliver a drug to its target.
“Antibodies have become a mature therapeutic modality, says Professor Ed Tate, co-founder of Myricx, GSK Chair in Chemical Biology in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial and a Satellite Group Leader at the Crick. “The ADC landscape has evolved rapidly in recent years, and we recognised the opportunity to apply our uniquely potent small molecule drugs as a class of powerful ADC payloads with a completely novel mode of action, an innovation the field has been seeking for some time.”
The drugs developed by Myricx selectively inhibit an enzyme called N-myristoyltransferase (NMT), which modifies proteins and is vital for multiple specific processes cancer cells use to stay alive. The hope is that they can more selectively affect cancer cells without the toxic side effects seen in other drugs; that they can work over longer periods of time; and that they can target dormant or ‘senescent’ cells, avoiding cancer recurrence.
“It hits one specific point in cell biology that links into dozens of different pathways, many of which are critical for cancer cells compared to normal cells,” says Ed. “And where most ADC payloads have an immediate effect, our drug takes up to several days before it starts to kill cancer cells, giving normal tissues time to recover.”
Preclinical investigations of the inhibitors have shown complete and durable tumour regressions, at well-tolerated doses, in many animal models of solid cancers and patient-derived organoid models.
This multi-million-pound investment will allow these potential therapies to move into clinical testing and means that Myricx will now evolve into a fully-fledged company, with its own laboratories and in-house R&D team in central London.
Myricx is founded on nearly 20 years of world-leading research on NMT and breakthrough discoveries related to its inhibition in cancer.
This work was supported by Cancer Research UK (CRUK), which provided funding to allow the team to investigate its therapeutic potential and to help develop drug-like molecules good enough to take into the clinic. “Without their support and the support of CRUK’s donors, we would not have made it to this exciting turning point,” says Ed.
When Ed established the Chemical Biology & Therapeutic Discovery Satellite Laboratory at the Crick, he began collaborating with Dinis Calado, who leads the Crick’s Immunity and Cancer Laboratory. Together their teams found that blocking NMT can kill cancerous cells driven by the gene MYC. MYC plays a role in a number of hard-to-treat cancers and directly targeting the gene has been a challenge - until now, it was thought to be undruggable.
In 2019, they won the Crick’s Sir David Cooksey Prize in Translation, in recognition of their progress toward the development of novel drug candidates. The Crick translation team then went on to support the spinout of Myricx in 2020.
“As we progress with this exciting next step for Myricx, it’s wonderful to have the continued support of teams at the Crick, Imperial and CRUK,” adds Ed. “This is a great example of how discovery research benefits from the expertise of different disciplines, accelerating translation for the benefit of patients.”
