Leiden-based Anavo Therapeutics, a company that claims to be the first to systematically drug phosphatases – a rich target space previously considered undruggable for decades, announced that it has raised €8.5M in a Seed extension round of funding.
With this extension round, Anavo Therapeutics’ total Seed funding comes to €28M.
Investors in this round
The investment came from a new investor MRL Ventures Fund. Existing investors M Ventures, Inkef, Taiho Ventures, and Bioqube Ventures also participated in the extension round.
Karin Kleinhans, PhD, Partner at MRL Ventures Fund, says, “We are encouraged by the progress being made at Anavo in establishing a systematic approach to phosphatase drug discovery. We believe Anavo’s platform offers the potential to harness the therapeutic opportunity of this important target class.”
Kleinhans will join Anavo’s Board of Directors, which includes Charles McDermott (Chairman); Therese Maria Liechtenstein, M Ventures; Simone Botti, INKEF Capital; Sakae Asanuma, Taiho Ventures; Debora Dumont, Bioqube Ventures; and Birgit Zech, PhD, CEO of Anavo Therapeutics.
Birgit Zech says, “Since our inception in 2021, Anavo Therapeutics has advanced multiple proprietary pipeline programmes in this centrally important target class and added significant expertise to the team, SAB, and the board. Today, we welcome MRL Ventures Fund to our existing investor syndicate.”
What does Anavo Therapeutics offer?
Anavo mentions on its site that numerous important molecular pathways in cells are controlled by phosphatases and kinases.
Phosphatases and kinases modify the activity of proteins or other biomolecules by removing or adding, respectively, a phosphate group. By doing this, they control the total output of whole signalling cascades. However, imbalances in this process can lead to a multitude of diseases.
Human protein kinases have already been exploited by pharmaceutical companies across the world, says Anavo, but following early-century setbacks, phosphatases were mostly left unexplored.
This is where Anavo Therapeutics looks to make a difference. The company provides the therapeutic potential of human phosphatase biology.
“Our approach focuses on combining a profound understanding of phosphatase biology with deep drug discovery expertise and state-of-the-art technologies to develop first-in-class and best-in-class small molecule modulators of phosphatase activity.”
In oncology, Anavo is developing various first-in-class therapeutic programmes and will use collaborations around its platform to generate a robust pipeline across many indications.
CEO Birgit Zech says, “Leveraging our unique IGNITE phosphatase drug discovery platform, we will continue to accelerate our proprietary portfolio of programmes targeting disease-relevant phosphatases toward clinical development while continuing to build a centre of excellence for phosphatase targeting.”
IGNITE is an informatics and knowledge base platform. It records modifications to the signal transduction pathways that control intricate biological processes under the control of reversible phosphorylation.
“Modelling the tissue- and organism-wide impact is essential to the optimisation of efficacious and safe drug candidates. We are advancing the systematic use of our Phosphoproteomics toolbox in phosphatase drug discovery and development,” adds the company.
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