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Funding will enable accelerated development of unique Pept™-in-based cancer therapeutics
Leuven, BELGIUM – 9 July 2020 – Aelin Therapeutics NV, an emerging biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of breakthrough Pept-in™-based therapeutics with novel modes of action to treat cancer and serious infectious diseases, today announces that it has been awarded a €2.3 million research grant from Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship (VLAIO).This grant will serve to further develop unique Pept-ins that have been identified against an undruggable high-value target in oncology. The funding will also enable accelerated deployment of the technology platform in oncology, with the goal to cross-fertilize the growing pipeline of novel Pept-in™-based candidate drugs in oncology.
Aelin Therapeutics’ unique approach to drug discovery and development is based on its powerful, proprietary Pept-in™ technology platform, generating Pept-in™-based therapeutics against high-value targets that are difficult to address with traditional small molecule drugs or protein-based therapeutics.
Alexander Scheer, CSO of Aelin Therapeutics, commented: “We are very pleased with the financial support and recognition from VLAIO and their commitment to stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation in Flanders. Since our foundation end 2017, we have significantly invested in the build-out of our technology platform to generate novel therapeutics and we now have generated compelling data with multiple Pept-ins™ against a number of targets in oncology. The funding will allow us to progress towards preclinical development with our lead Pept-in molecule against an high-value undruggable target in oncology, and to further develop differentiating, novel mode of action candidate medicines and position Aelin Therapeutics as a true platform company with multiple shots on goal.”
About Aelin Therapeutics’ proprietary Pept-in™ technology platform
Aelin Therapeutics’ breakthrough Pept-in™ technology is a highly flexible and powerful platform that can be applied on any disease-related protein, representing a new paradigm in drug discovery and development to tackle diseases that are currently difficult to address with small molecule- and protein-based drugs. The technology is protected by a broad and strong IP portfolio, trade secrets and knowhow.
Active proteins fold into a three-dimensional structure during and after synthesis. However, some triggers, such as unfavorable environmental conditions or gene mutations, can disturb this folding process, resulting in the aggregation of proteins and thereby making them inactive.
Aggregation prone regions (APR) promote this aggregation process and have been identified inside almost all proteins. The Pept-in™ technology has been discovered and developed based on the observation that the protein aggregation process can be induced in almost any protein by using a synthetic peptide that contains a target protein APR.
Pept-ins™ can therefore functionally and selectively knock-out almost any protein, independent of structural or functional protein class, forming the basis of novel therapeutics against high-value undruggable targets to treat severe diseases with high unmet needs, including various types of cancer and infections.
About Aelin Therapeutics
Aelin Therapeutics is an emerging biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of breakthrough Pept-in™-based therapeutics with novel modes of action to address current high unmet needs in infectious diseases and oncology.
Based on its powerful technology platform, the Company is building a proprietary product pipeline of anti-infectives and anti-cancer drugs. To date, preclinical proofs-of-concept have been achieved in multiple disease areas and published in landmark papers such as Science and Nature[1].
Aelin Therapeutics was founded in 2017 as a spin-off from the VIB (Flanders Institute for Biotechnology) and its partner universities KU Leuven, VUB and UGent. The Company is backed by a syndicate of renowned life science investors comprising LSP (The Netherlands), PMV (Belgium), Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (Germany) and Fund+ (Belgium).
For more information, please visit www.aelintx.com or follow-us on LinkedIn.
For further information, please contact:
Els Beirnaert, CEO
T: +32 (0)16 85 27 00
M: +32 (0)478 80 34 80
E: els.beirnaert@aelintx.com; pressreleases@aelintx.com
[1] Michiels et al. (2020) Reverse engineering synthetic antiviral amyloids, Nature commun 11 (2832). Khodaparast et al. (2018) Aggregating sequences that occur in many proteins constitute weak spots of bacterial proteostasis. Nat Commun 9(1), 866. Gallardo et al. (2016) De novo design of a biologically active amyloid. Science 354(6313), aah4949.
Dr. Scheer brings over 25 years of international life science experience in multiple disciplines, technologies and therapeutic areas
Leuven, BELGIUM – 23 April 2020 – Aelin Therapeutics NV, an emerging biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of breakthrough Pept-in™-based therapeutics with novel modes of action to treat serious infectious diseases and cancer, today announces that it has appointed Dr. Alexander Scheer as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), effective 1 May 2020. Dr. Scheer will be responsible for setting the scientific strategy and priorities for Aelin Therapeutics, as well as overseeing day-to-day research operations.
Dr. Scheer joins Aelin Therapeutics from Erytech Pharma where he most recently served as Chief Scientific Officer, responsible for research and preclinical development in oncology and rare diseases.
Dr. Els Beirnaert, Chief Executive Officer of Aelin Therapeutics, commented: “We are very pleased to welcome Alexander to Aelin Therapeutics. He is an experienced international leader with a broad knowledge of drug development across multiple disease indications and drug platforms, including significant experience in tackling undruggable disease targets. His proven track record of driving drug discovery and development across both internal and external programs will be invaluable as we further expand the applications of our platform to build a pipeline of novel therapeutics to treat life-threatening diseases. We are honored that someone with Alexander’s caliber is joining our team and we look forward to his contributions to bring the company to its next stage of development.”
Dr. Alexander Scheer added: “I am very impressed by the science and innovation of Aelin Therapeutics and the company’s unique and validated approach in addressing severe, difficult-to-treat diseases. I believe that the company has significant opportunity to further exploit a novel disease target space that is difficult to address with current small molecule drugs and biologicals. I am very excited to join this unique company and I look forward to working with the talented team to continue to build leadership in innovative drug development.”
Dr. Alexander Scheer brings over 25 years of industry experience across both biotech and large pharmaceutical companies. He has held multiple R&D and leadership positions at Merck Serono, Pierre Fabre and Erytech Pharma. Dr. Scheer holds a Master’s Degree in Chemistry/Biochemistry from the University of Göttingen, Germany and a Ph.D. in Chemistry/Biochemistry from the German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg. He did his post-doctoral studies in GPCR research at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Dr. Scheer is co-author of 44 peer-reviewed publications and a co-inventor on four granted and pending patent applications.
About Aelin Therapeutics’ proprietary Pept-in™ technology platform
Aelin Therapeutics’ breakthrough Pept-in™ technology is a highly flexible and powerful platform that can be applied on any disease-related protein, representing a new paradigm in drug discovery and development to tackle diseases that are currently difficult to address with small molecule- and antibody-based drugs. The technology is protected by a broad and strong IP portfolio, trade secrets and knowhow.
Active proteins fold into a three-dimensional structure during and after synthesis. However, some triggers, such as unfavorable environmental conditions or gene mutations, can disturb this folding process, resulting in the aggregation of proteins and thereby making them inactive.
Aggregation prone regions (APR) promote this aggregation process and have been identified inside almost all proteins. The Pept-in™ technology has been discovered and developed based on the observation that the protein aggregation process can be induced in almost any protein by using a synthetic peptide that contains a target protein APR.
Pept-ins™ can therefore functionally and selectively knock-out almost any protein, independent of structural or functional protein class, forming the basis of novel therapeutics against high-value undruggable targets to treat severe diseases with high unmet needs, including infections and various types of cancer.
About Aelin Therapeutics
Aelin Therapeutics is an emerging biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of breakthrough Pept-in™-based therapeutics with novel modes of action to address current high unmet needs in infectious diseases and oncology.
Based on its powerful technology platform, the Company is building a proprietary product pipeline of anti-infectives and anti-cancer drugs. To date, preclinical proofs-of-concept have been achieved in multiple disease areas and published in landmark papers such as Science and Nature[1].
Aelin Therapeutics was founded in 2017 as a spin-off from the VIB (Flanders Institute for Biotechnology) and its partner universities KU Leuven, VUB and UGent. The Company is backed by a syndicate of renowned life science investors comprising LSP (The Netherlands), PMV (Belgium), Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (Germany) and Fund+ (Belgium).
[1] Khodaparast et al. (2018) Aggregating sequences that occur in many proteins constitute weak spots of bacterial proteostasis. Nat Commun 9(1), 866. Gallardo et al. (2016) De novo design of a biologically active amyloid. Science 354(6313), aah4949
The young biotech spin-off gains momentum with a VLAIO grant and an investor award
Aelin Therapeutics announced today that it has been awarded close to 1M EUR in non-dilutive funding from the Flemish Government through Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship (VLAIO) to explore its proprietary Pept-inTM technology for high-value targets implicated in oncology.
Pursuing “undruggable” cancer targets
Aelin Therapeutics plans to pursue those targets that have historically been considered undruggable; more specifically, a wide range of challenging biological targets in the field of oncology. They believe their Pept-inTM technology can succeed where, in the past, conventional therapeutic approaches have failed since the technology exploits a completely novel therapeutic approach, inducing protein aggregation to knock-down the function of specific target proteins.
“We are grateful for VLAIO’s financial support that will enable us work towards well sought-after, high-value targets and develop therapeutics for cancer patients who currently still lack effective treatment options,” says CEO Els Beirnaert. “It will allow us to explore a second dedicated drug development program, this time in oncology. As such, we can diversify the disease focus of our company and will complement our ongoing drug development in the field of antibiotics.” This diversification is of tremendous importance for the future value of Aelin Therapeutics as it has the ambition to commercially exploit the Pept-inTM technology for various therapeutic applications. The VLAIO grant will allow the budding biotech company to switch into a higher gear.
The Switch lab at VIB-KU Leuven, on which research the company is based, is also the research partner in this project and will examine the mode of action of identified Pept-insTM, a crucial aspect in further elucidating the Pept-inTM potential. “This will help expand the knowledge base related to this groundbreaking technology and will benefit future programs in other disease areas as well” says prof Frederic Rousseau heading the Switch Lab together with prof Joost Schymkowitz.
Roll out the red carpet
Aelin Therapeutics has the ambition to become a true platform company exploiting different programs for additional disease indications based on its unique features and has firmly positioned itself on the international radar.
Earlier this month, the company received a Life Star Award at the Jefferies 2018 London Healthcare Conference. The jury praised Aelin Therapeutics as a ‘highly innovative company, working in an incredibly important therapeutic area’, with an ‘exciting pipeline with real potential’.
More info
Aelin Therapeutics
Aelin Therapeutics was founded in 2017 as a spin-off from VIB, KU Leuven, VUB and UGent. Building on a solid scientific base and a convincing data set generated by the founding scientists Joost Schymkowitz and Frederic Rousseau (VIB-KU Leuven), Aelin Therapeutics secured € 27M in a Series A financing, bringing together a strong group of well-reputed investors consisting of LSP (the Netherlands), PMV (Belgium), Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (Germany) and Fund+ (Belgium) to explore a novel modality in drug development, namely inducing targeted protein aggregation for the development of new therapeutics.
The technology, branded Pept-insTM, provides a completely new way to design drugs, as it exploits the power of protein aggregation to specifically target proteins implicated in disease. This unexplored concept is ideally suited for development of novel antibiotics, which is currently the primary focus for drug discovery within the company.
Yesterday at the Jefferies 2018 London Healthcare Conference, Aelin Therapeutics has been awarded the Life Stars award for EU Private Finance Raise of the year.
The Jefferies conference is the largest conference focused on healthcare in Europe, celebrating its ninth edition in 2018. This year’s conference took place in London. Last year, the conference hosted more than 400 companies, 1800 attendees and 4,500 business-to-business and investor meetings.
At the 2018 event, Aelin Therapeutics was awarded the prestigious LifeStarts Award in the category “EU Private Finance Raise of the Year”. The jury particularly praised the promising new technology and the great potential impact within a large disease domain.
Fighting antibiotic-resistant or untreatable diseases in an innovative way: that is the mission of Aelin Therapeutics. The company will develop so-called Pept-insTM, a new type of medication that neutralizes ‘bad’ proteins by making them stick together. Founder Prof. Joost Schymkowitz and Prof. Frederic Rousseau (both VIB-KU Leuven) have already proven the success of these designer molecules in bacteria, cancer cells, fungi, viruses and plant cells. Their pioneering studies have been published in leading journals such as Science. The innovative concept, combined with solid science, formed the basis for bringing together an internationally renowned investor consortium in this new spin-off with an initial capital of € 27 million. The international consortium of investors consists of PMV and Fund+ (Belgium), LSP (the Netherlands) and two major corporate funds: the German Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund and the Swiss Novartis Venture Fund.
What makes Pept-insTM stand out is that they can be designed flexibly for different conditions and can also find their ‘target proteins’ in hard-to-reach places. As a result, diseases that traditionally seemed untreatable could be cured.
Aelin Therapeutics will pursue this ambition in two domains. The company will develop antibacterial drugs as an alternative to the traditional antibiotics against which many diseases have become resistant. The start-up also focuses on anti-cancer therapies. The goal is to test the first Pept-inTM-based drugs on patients in the foreseeable future.
Researchers at VIB, KU Leuven and UZ Leuven devised a novel approach to develop antibacterial drugs. With antibiotic resistance on the rise worldwide, such new drugs are urgently needed. The Flemish biotech spin-off Aelin Therapeutics will exploit the technology to produce new antibiotics for the clinic.
Around the world bacteria are developing new strategies that render them resistant to antibiotics, resulting in an increasing number of patients dying from untreatable infections. Experts now agree that unless we discover new medicines soon, the post-antibiotic era may be upon us, effectively pushing human healthcare back to the 1940s. In particular, a class of bacteria called ‘Gram-negative bacteria’, which include the well-known species E. coli, are causing major problems in our hospitals.
The problem is that most antibiotics that we know today work according to only a few mechanisms of action and so when a bacterium becomes tolerant to one drug, it often becomes tolerant to the whole family. What we need to solve this situation is an entirely new class of drugs that shares no structural or mechanistic similarities with the existing antibiotics.
Prof. Joost Schymkowitz and Prof. Frederic Rousseau of VIB-KU Leuven in collaboration with Prof. Johan Van Eldere of University Hospitals Leuven have gone one step further: they have developed a new way of designing antibiotic drugs that can give rise to many new antibacterial molecules.
These drugs penetrate bacterial cells where they induce a process called protein aggregation. This process resembles what happens when boiling an egg, but now without heat: proteins that normally need to carry out essential functions for the bacteria – such as digesting their food – clump together and can no longer carry out their work. As this affects many proteins in the bacterial cell all at once, the bacteria rapidly succumb and die.
In a recent publication in the highly regarded scientific journal Nature Communications, the scientists reveal novel molecules with a strong antibacterial (bactericidal) activity against Gram-negative bacteria.
The technology will now be further explored and exploited by the Flemish start-up Aelin Therapeutics. Founded last December after attracting 27 million Euro in investments, this biotech company uses the protein aggregation approach (PeptinTM-technology) devised by Schymkowitz and Rousseau to develop new therapeutics.
Via Aelin Therapeutics the lab findings will be applied to generate many more antibacterial molecules. The company aims to apply the same technology to target a wide array of other diseases.
Publication
Aggregating sequences that occur in many proteins constitute weak spots of bacterial proteostasis, Khodaparast et al., Nature Communications 2018
Financing
The Switch Laboratory was supported by grants from the European Research Council
under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme ERC Grant agreement
647458 (MANGO) to JS and VLAIO (IWT, SBO grant 60839)
Questions from patients
A breakthrough in research is not the same as a breakthrough in medicine. The realizations of VIB researchers can form the basis of new therapies, but the development path still takes years. This can raise a lot of questions. That is why we ask you to please refer questions in your report or article to the email address that VIB makes available for this purpose: patienteninfo@vib.be. Everyone can submit questions concerning this and other medically-oriented research directly to VIB via this address.
New VIB start-up Aelin Therapeutics secures 27 M€ to exploit its proprietary Pept-in™ protein knockdown platform
Aelin Therapeutics, a privately held Belgian biotherapeutics company, announces today that it has secured a 27 M€ investment to pioneer a novel modality in drug development in order to create a completely new class of antibiotics and first-in-class therapeutics against high-value undruggable human targets. The technology, branded Pept-ins™, harnesses the power of protein aggregation to specifically induce functional knockdown of a target protein. The company will use the proceeds of the 27 M€ Series A financing, to bring a first Pept-in product to the clinic.
Aelin Therapeutics is founded by VIB and its partner universities KU Leuven, VUB and UGent, based on the groundbreaking work of renowned structural biologists Prof Joost Schymkowitz and Prof Frederic Rousseau. The company is based on a very comprehensive preclinical Proof of Concept data package illustrating different applications of the technology such as in bacteria and cancer cells, but also in fungi, viruses and plant cells, with publications in high impact journals including Science. The Pept-in technology allows for the rational design of novel biotherapeutics and differentiates itself from any other therapeutic modality through its unique mode of action, its designability and intracellular target space out of reach for typical small molecule or antibody approaches.
Building on the solid science and a convincing data set, Aelin Therapeutics has succeeded in raising 27 M€, bringing together a strong group of well-reputed investors consisting of LSP (the Netherlands), PMV (Belgium), Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (Germany) andFund+ (Belgium). These resources enable the company to build on its platform capabilities and develop its first products until the end of initial clinical development.
Scientific publications
De novo design of a biologically active amyloid, Gallardo et al., Science 2016
Protein aggregation as an antibiotic design strategy, Bednarska N et al., Molecular Microbiology 2016
