From technology platform to biopharmaceutical company with a product pipeline. Engitix Ltd, the British biopharmaceutical company that has already developed a platform for the discovery of human extracellular matrix drug targets (ECM, Extracell human matrix) is ready to make a new leap that will take place thanks to the support of two investors, one Italian, the Dompé pharmaceutical group, and an American one, Netherton Investments, the fund that invests on behalf of Mike Platt, co-founder of BlueCrest Capital: together they announced that they will invest 54 million dollars in Engitix.
A strategic collaboration for Dompé
In particular, Dompé’s agreement with Engitix includes both an investment and a multi-year and multi-program strategic research and development collaboration to support the identification of new treatments for fibrosis and liver-associated solid tumors. The investment envisages that the Italian pharmaceutical group can benefit from the clinical and commercial results and royalties on the commercialized products developed as part of the collaboration.
The artificial intelligence of Exscalate
The collaboration calls for Dompé to provide direct access to its facilities, resources and expertise, including the Exscalate platform, born in Italy and which uses artificial intelligence and supercomputing to accelerate drug design. For the Italian platform, which is able to design new molecules capable of specifically interacting with a tissue or regulating the biological activity of a cell or a protein, this is an important new project that strengthens its role. Exscalate enabled Dompé to accelerate drug design and identify new applications for existing molecular entities for which potential safety is well established, reducing the time from identifying a health threat to rapidly developing new drugs. . Among the latest operations is the one with Aramis biosciences which uses the A197 molecule, identified by Exscalate, through a path that has been accelerated by at least 4 times thanks to the use of the Italian platform: last week for the A197 molecule arrived the ‘authorization from the American FDA for human experimentation.
The interaction of the teams
As Marcello Allegretti, chief scientific officer of Dompé explains, the collaboration and investment in Engitix combines two elements that are in the strings of the pharmaceutical group. The first is “to improve people’s lives”, the second is “to collaborate with the best academic and industrial teams to accelerate research that will bring new answers to diseases still seeking treatment”. The interaction of the Dompé team with that of Engitix will allow «to combine the power of Exscalate with the profound understanding that Engitix has about fibrosis and the microenvironment of solid tumors. The power of its ECM platform – continues Allegretti – will allow us to accelerate the clinical translation of objectives beyond our four key internal therapeutic areas of ophthalmology, metabolic disorders, oncology and pain management ».
The history of Engitix
Using its ECM platform, Engitix has pursued research on liver diseases such as primary sclerosing cholangitis, adenocarcinoma, liver metastases and hepatocellular carcinoma, as well as associated drug discovery programs in fibrosis and solid tumors. “This financing and the new partnership with Dompé allow us to continue our evolution from a platform to a multi-asset and multi-program company in the preclinical phase and to continue to demonstrate the value of our ECM platform”, says Giuseppe Mazza co-founder and CEO of Engitix which underlines the importance of having the continuous support of Mike Platt and, today, of Dompé as a partner and investor. “This – continues Mazza – will allow us to advance our preclinical programs with respect to the objectives identified using our ECM platform through the selection of candidates and new clinical studies”. To complete the project, Gianluca Rossetti, corporate business development director of Dompé and Mike Platt, co-founder and CEO of BlueCrest Capital Management, will join the Engitix board of directors.