Enedra Therapeutics, a London-based therapeutics company, has secured venture financing and non-dilutive funding through UKRI’s Innovate UK Future Economy Investor Partnerships programme to support the development of next-generation precision therapies for advanced, genetically heterogeneous cancers.
The financing round was supported by KU Leuven’s venture capital arm (Centre for Drug Design and Discovery), o2h Ventures, and follow-on investor Cancer Research Horizons, all of which bring significant experience in target validation and drug discovery and development.
Enedra Therapeutics 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.
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 Ventures 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, which, 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.”
