Aelin Therapeutics NV bags €27m in Series A financing

The financing round was led by LSP (the Netherlands), PMV (Belgium), Novartis Venture Fund (Switzerland), Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (Germany) and Fund+ (Belgium). The funds will finance the spin-out of VIB and partner universities KU Leuven, VUB and UGent until the end of Phase I development of its lead candidate, the company said in a press release.

Aelin Therapeutics’ platform is based on findings of Joost Schymkowitz and Frederic Rousseau, who laid the groundwork for rational design of compounds that lead to aggregation even of intracellular protein targets. They used algorithms that identify amyloidogenic peptide segments in genes encoding tyrosine kinases or other proteins. Suchs amyloids are associated with diseases like cataracts, Alzheimer's, ALS or blood clotting disorders and tend to act as inducers for protein aggregation.

Rousseau and Schymkowitz invented a design principle that could be used to destroy the function of virtually any protein based on the properties of amyloids. In 2016, they reported a candidate drug dubbed vascin, which targets VEGFR2, to penetrate the cell and to trigger VEGFR2 aggregation. 

The company suggests it could also use inducers of protein aggregation to create a completely new class of antibiotics against MRSA and first-in-class therapeutics against currently undruggable targets in man. The researchers hold a range of patents, one of which together with Sanofi, on aggregation inducers of tyrosine kinases.