ThirtyFiveBio Awarded Innovate UK Biomedical Catalyst Grant to Advance GPR35 Inhibitor Program with Initial Focus on Inflammatory Gastrointestinal Disease Ulcerative Colitis
Summary
Second Prestigious BMC Grant in Under a Year will Enable Creation and Validation of Biomarker-Driven Process for Precisely Selecting Patients Most Likely to Respond to GPR35 InhibitionCompany Narrows Initial Therapeutic Focus to Ulcerative Colitis with Precision Medicine Strategy for Clinical DevelopmentValidating Non-Dilutive Grant Funding Supports Ongoing Fundraising Efforts as Company Continues on Path Toward ClinicOXFORD, United Kingdom, July 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- ThirtyFiveBio Limited, a biotechnology company developing first-in-class small molecule inhibitors of G protein-coupled receptor 35 (GPR35) for the treatment of gastrointestinal (GI) disease, today announced that the company, along with its long-standing academic collaborator, Nicole Kaneider, Ph.D., of the University of Cambridge, have been awarded a highly competitive Biomedical Catalyst (BMC) grant from Innovate UK, the UKs innovation agency. The grant, for a total of \xa3643,371 (~$817,000), will fund preclinical research designed to enable the company to pursue a precision medicine approach to patient selection for the clinical development of its first-in-class GPR35 inhibitors. Once this blueprint for GPR35 inhibitor responsiveness is created, the researchers will work to validate the genetic signature in additional preclinical studies, thus providing the company with biomarkers that can be used for precision patient selection in planned clinical trials. It is this opportunity to engage at the source of disease activity that has driven our decision to elevate conditions such as ulcerative colitis to the top of our target indication list," said James Westcott, Ph.D., chief executive officer of ThirtyFiveBio. ThirtyFiveBio has leveraged its fully enabled drug discovery platform to identify multiple unique families of first-in-class small-molecule GPR35 inhibitors that it is advancing through lead optimization activities.