Technology

Posted on January 13, 2020 by staff

£2m funding for Elasmogen

Technology

Elasmogen has secured £2m funding.

The Scottish biopharmaceutical company secured the follow-on equity investment from Deepbridge Capital, taking its total investment in Elasmogen to £3.15m.

The funding will be used to accelerate the development of the company’s next generation biologics for site-specific delivery and treatment of diseases refractory to existing drug therapies.

soloMERs are Elasmogen’s proprietary, humanised versions of drugs originally based on a protein found in nature called a VNAR.

VNARs are small, antibody-like proteins and are key components of a shark’s immune system.

Elasmogen CEO Caroline Barelle said: “We are delighted that Deepbridge has continued to support our future development.

“Our pre-clinical data sets are becoming more and more compelling. This data is turning our original hypotheses about the unique selling points of our soloMERs into scientific reality.

“In fact, we now have results that show our drugs, at least in the laboratory, are 10x more potent than existing therapies.

“In addition, carefully selected partnerships are accelerating the disease modifying potential of our soloMERs, delivering the potential to destroy hard to treat cancers by stealth and from deep inside the solid-tumour.”

Dr Savvas Neophytou, partner, head of life sciences at Deepbridge Capital, commented: “Having supported Elasmogen from seed-stage, we are delighted to continue working in partnership with the exceptional team at Elasmogen.

“Elasmogen typifies the type of growth-focused early-stage innovation that the Enterprise Investment Scheme was designed to support.”