Novo Holdings and Abingworth co-lead £90m financing in Myricx Bio Ltd

Novo Holdings co-led the financing together with Abingworth; new investors British Patient Capital (BPC) and Eli Lilly & Company, as well as seed investors Sofinnova Partners and Brandon CapitalFunds participated in the largest European Series A financing this year. The assets will be used to build out Myricx Bio’s ADC platform and advance its pipeline through clinical proof of concept. Novo Holdings Venture Investments Partner Michael Bauer will join Myricx Board of Directors, the company’s Principal, Max Klement, will join the Board as an observer.

Myricx Bio Ltd is a spin out from Imperial College London and the Francis Crick Institute focusing on the the discovery and development of a novel payload class for cancer-targeted antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). The so-called N-myristoyltransferase inhibitors (NMTi) have overcome drug resistance of existing ADC payloads inducing apoptosis and accumulation in the G1 phase. NMT is an enzyme that adds a specific lipid modification to a number of protein targets key to cancer cell surviby inducing val. N-myristoylation is the N-terminal modification of proteins with myristic acid, a 14-carbon fatty acid. Catalysed by two enzymes, N-myristoyltransferase (NMT1, NMT2), this modification can be co- or post-translational.

The funds will be used to advance NMTi ADCs through clinical proof of concept, targeting two prioritised clinically validated tumour-associated antigens, B7-H3 (prostate cancer) and HER2 (breast + gastric cancer) besides TROP2 (breast cancer). Additionally, the company will establish labs in London and expand its staff.

The ADC field is currently dominated by two key payload classes, microtubule and topoisomerase inhibitors, with patients susceptible to the acquired resistance leading to the need for greater payload diversification with a novel, orthogonal and differentiated mechanism of action.

Myricx Bio Ltd has preclinically shown that NMTi ADCs achieve complete and durable tumor regressions, at well tolerated doses, in multiple solid cancer models and organoid models that are refractory to topoisomerase inhibitor-based ADCs. NMTi-ADCs MYX2449 (Her2), MYX2468 (Trop2) and MYX2470 (B7-H3) each demonstrated extensive tumour regression in a range of solid cancer models at well tolerated doses with superior or equal efficacy to comparator Topo1-ADCs. MYX2449 was shown to be well tolerated in mice (50mpk) and cynomolgous macaques (Cyno, 20mpk). MYX2468 and MYX2470 are in Cyno repeat dose tox studies.

Last September, Myricx Bio inked an antibody license agreement with Chinese Biocytogen Pharmaceuticals Co.Ltd, under which the Bejing-based company will conjugate tumour-selective antibodies provided through its RenMice^® platform with Myricx Bio’sproprietary linker and NMTi payload platform. 

Myricx Bio is the trading name of Myricx Pharma Ltd which was founded by Professors Ed Tate and Roberto Solari.