Sitryx Therapeutics bags $30m in Series A Financing

The company is closely linked to GSK and will have the opportunity to use the drugmaker's resources. Sitryx Therapeutics has been spun-off this year from GSK's Immunology Network, the immunology platform underpinning all therapy areas at GSK, by Peter Paul Tak, a serial entrepreneur with huge experience in immunology and oncology, who led the open innovation network from 2011 to 2018 as GSK's Chief Immunology Officer.

Sitryx Therapeutics announced it has licenced six programmes from GSK in immunometabolics, an area thought to be important to break T cell anergy in the microenvironment of solid tumours. Modulation of AMPK, mTOR, and HIF-1α-mediated signalling has been linked to a shift in the ratio of effector T cells and regulatory T cells and tumour-promoting (M2) and tumor-attacking (M1) macrophages. Immunometabolics goes back to Otto Warburg's observation that proliferating cells show changes in their glucose energy metabolism.

Sitryx Therapeutics has an experienced management and prominent co-founders. CEO Neil Weir came in from UCB SA. Sitryx co-founders include Luke O’Neill from Trinity College Dublin; Jonathan Powell from Johns Hopkins University; Jeff Rathmell from Vanderbilt University; and Michael Rosenblum from UCLA San Francisco.