Curve Therapeutics raises £40.5m in Series A financing

New investors Columbus Venture Partners and British Patient Capital and founding investor Advent Life Sciences as well as seed investor Epidarex Capital joined lead investor Pfizer Ventures. Curve Therapeutics has developed the intracellular Microcycle screening platform, which so far has identified cyclic peptides that target HIF1/2 upregulation in tumours, dimerisation of the cancer cell’s purine biosynthesis blocker ATIC,  the RAS-RAF oncogenes, and FoxA1 in hormone refractive breast cancer.

The company announced it will use the proceeds to advance its early preclinical programmes into the clinic.Additionally, the Southampton-based company plans to expand the discovery platform beyond challenging and complex intracellular protein targets.

The company’s proprietary Microcycle platform enables the direct discovery of biologically active molecules against targets and allosteric sites that have been difficult to address using conventional drug discovery methods.

One year ago, Curve Therapeutics closed a potential up to US1.7bn deal with Merck Sharpe & Dohme (MSD) to discover and validate modulators of up to five therapeutic targets using its Microcycle technology, initially for oncology and neurology indications. The company’s functional drug discovery platform was developed by Prof. Dr Ali Tavassoli’s group  in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Southampton. He is now CSO and co-founder of the company, spun out in 2019 from its Department.