Iksuda Therapeutics, the Newcastle-based biotech, has raised $47 million in funding to finance human clinical trials of its lead cancer drug IKS03. The money came from new investors including South Korean drug developer Celltrion, which becomes Iksuda’s largest shareholder.
Iksuda is based in Newcastle’s Helix business, technology and science hub and is developing antibody-based cancer therapies that train the body to fight back against the disease. The drugs target cancers resistant to current treatments and target specific tumour types and sub-types. Biotech therapies are typically much more targeted to the biology of a particular disease, and patient, than traditional ‘one-size-fits-all’ treatments.
The ADC (antibody drug conjugate) drugs that Iksuda is developing target and poison tumour cells. The approach has been seen as holding promise for some time but has been limited by the fact it has proven difficult to stop healthy cells also being wrongly targeted. Iksuda, however, is confident the technology used in its advanced ISK03 ADC means the poison it carries can only be delivered to cancer cells.
The technology was last year licensed from a Korean company that has been working on refining it for years. Iksuda expects IKS03 to be most effective in treating blood cancers like lymphoma and leukaemia.
While funding phase 1 human clinical trials of IKS03 is the headline use to which the new investment raised will be channelled, Iksuda will also use some of the money to continue development of some of its other earlier-stage cancer therapies. The biotech’s next most advanced drug, also an ADC, is IKS012. It is expected to become a treatment for ovarian, lung and TNBC, a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer. It’s also currently at the pre-clinical trials stage.
Two further treatments, IKS02 and IKS04, are in the research and development phase and are being developed to target solid tumours.
Commenting on the successfully closed new funding round, Iksuda’s chief executive Dave Simpson said:
“This is a transformational investment milestone for Iksuda, enabling us to focus on the progression of our industry-leading ADC programmes and bring them to the clinic, whilst supporting our commercial growth.”
Until 2018 Iksuda was known as Glythera before a rebranding to mark the company’s change of direction from technology licenser to drug development. The company was founded by chief executive Mr Simpson in 2012.