Curve bags $51m to advance platform and pipeline

Curve, a biotech firm focused on developing an intracellular screening platform named Microcycle to ease challenges associated with protein targets, said the funding will enable the company to advance these assets quickly towards clinical development.

“The investment will help us to develop our current cancer programmes and to develop the platform. Platform development includes: increasing the number of functional cell-based assays so that we can broaden the number of intracellular targets that we can address; extend beyond intracellular targets to address membrane-bound targets such as receptors; identifying ways to address non-protein targets, such as RNA; and, develop the computational tools that we use to transform Microcycles into non-peptide small-molecules for further development,” Simon Kerry, CEO of Curve told BioProcess Insider.

According to the firm, its Microcycle platform can directly discover biologically active molecules against targets that have been hard to address using traditional drug discovery methods.

“The Microcycle platform allows Curve to screen a diverse collection of Microcycles (small cyclic peptides) against challenging and complex disease targets in their native environment of a mammalian cell,” said Kerry.

He added: “There are estimates that 85% of drug targets cannot currently be addressed by conventional drug discovery methods – it is these drug targets that we are pointing our technology to and included protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions.”

Curve’s pipeline assets consist of a dual-inhibitor of HIF-1 and HIF-2, which aims to address the survival mechanisms in over half of solid tumors and an inhibitor of ATIC dimerization that targets vulnerabilities in a wide range of cancers.

“The platform is already at a point that it can be used for drug screening and has been successfully deployed in our hands. Following platform development, we will be able to screen against a broader range of disease targets to create a diverse pipeline of innovative drugs. Our aim is to continue developing the platform in new ways and to advance a number of programs into clinical development,” Kerry told us.The Series A financing was led by Pfizer Ventures and the following investors, Columbus Venture Partners, British Capital, Advent Life Sciences and seed investor, Epidarex Capital.

The Series A financing was led by Pfizer Ventures and the following investors, Columbus Venture Partners, British Capital, Advent Life Sciences and seed investor, Epidarex Capital.