Six million for OncoTartis
The American "daughter" of the Skolkovo company attracted $ 6 million from investors
Vitaly Shustikov, Skolkovo
The American biotech company OncoTartis Inc., which is developing a new class of anticancer drugs, has raised $6 million from two investors. The funds will be used to conduct phase I clinical trials of the drug OT-82 for the treatment of resistant forms of acute leukemia.
The investment round was attended by the structure of Roman Abramovich NormaInvestments and Pharmstandard International S.A. Viktor Kharitonin.
OncoTartis Inc. It is a subsidiary of the Russian OncoTartis LLC, established in 2011 by the Bioprocess Capital Ventures venture fund with the aim of developing innovative medicines based on a new unique platform for anti-tissue therapy of oncological diseases. The scientific founder of the project is Andrey Gudkov, a world–renowned scientist, senior vice president for Basic Science at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), one of the largest cancer centers in the United States.
OncoTartis LLC is a resident of the biomedical technologies cluster of the Skolkovo Foundation. In the period 2011-2016, the project received grant support from Skolkovo, and at the recent Startup Village competition, the project took one of the prizes.
At the time of the project's foundation, intellectual property existed in the form of "know-how" – a developed methodology for the identification and development of "anti-tissue" drugs and data on the first series of isolated compounds with a patentable chemical structure. The Bioprocess Capital Ventures Fund invested about 300 million rubles in the project in two rounds of investments.
Vladimir Tezov, General Director of the Management Company of the Bioprocess Capital Ventures Fund: "We believe that we were not mistaken by investing in the project at such an early stage. The method of "pharmacological surgery" proposed by Professor Gudkov has been confirmed during the development of the project and has now allowed not only to create a molecule that selectively kills hematopoietic cells, but also to determine the mechanism of its action. The results of preclinical studies of the drug candidate show that the drug has high activity and selectivity."
The project is being implemented according to a "two-country" business model, in which the efforts of OncoTartis LLC and OncoTartis Inc. are jointly developing the drug for the markets of the Russian Federation and the USA. The staff of both companies has unique qualifications and experience that allows them to successfully continue development.
Andrey Leonov, General Director of OncoTartis LLC:
"During the next round of investment, after the opening of IND (obtaining permission for clinical trials), a clinical trial involving patients with various blood oncological diseases will be conducted in several centers in the United States. As a result of this study, we plan to evaluate the safety of our drug candidate, as well as to obtain preliminary results on its effectiveness in the selected therapeutic regimen."
Kirill Kayem, Senior Vice President for Innovation, Skolkovo Foundation:
"The development of OncoTartis is not only a fundamentally new drug, the so–called first-in-class. This is the creation of a completely new platform for the development of new classes of medicines. Today, the company, having received good data in preclinical studies, has focused its efforts on resistant forms of acute leukemia. The expected success in the clinical phases of research in the future will allow us to expand the use of the platform and enter the development of drugs for new targets. The participation of an investor with large industry competencies confirms the high perspective of the platform."
The global market of existing drugs for the treatment of acute and lymphoblastic leukemia is estimated at several billion US dollars. Despite significant progress in treatment, today there is still a need to develop and market new drugs for the treatment of these diseases.
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