Four startups to accelerate their therapeutics with BaseLaunch

BaseLaunch collaborates with players from the biotech sector, leading pharmaceutical companies, and venture funds to support scientists and entrepreneurs in launching and building biotech companies. Since its establishment in 2018, the BaseLaunch portfolio has grown to 22 companies, of which nine have raised over $550 million in financing. Several collaborations have been initiated and one company has been sold.

The recently added startups to the portfolio:

Salvina Therapeutics
Founded in May this year, Salvina Therapeutics is developing new therapies to break efficacy ceilings in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The company has unlocked a novel epitope for selectively targeting TNF, resulting in the generation of antibodies with a highly innovative mode of action. These have the potential to significantly improve the benefit/risk ratio of TNF targeting in certain diseases and enable combination therapies that have not been developable to date. The anti-TNF market is worth over $ 40 billion per year and includes the best-selling drug of all time, Humira (adalimumab). The founding team brings extensive academic, clinical and industry research experience together with a proven track record of building and exiting biotech companies. Dr. Mattias Ivarsson (CEO) and Dr. Helmut Sparrer (CSO) lead the team, with Dr. Tamas Schweighoffer as Chairman, and Prof. Mihai Netea and Prof. Leo Joosten as scientific advisors.

FimmCyte
The Basel-based based startup is developing antibody based, non-hormonal therapy for the treatment of late-stage endometriosis. The treatment is based on our teams discovery of the overexpression of a specific protein in endometriosis cells compared to everywhere else in the body. This allows for direct and elimination of the diseased tissue. Having shown efficacy in eliminating endometriosis tissue in the lab and animal models, the startup is working towards entering the clinical phase in the next few years.

Phialogics
An immune system out of balance can lead to autoimmune diseases, such as psoriasis or rheumatoid arthritis. Current drugs suppress the immune system, while drugs that re-establish immune balance are lacking. Following several years of research at Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology ITMP, a team of scientists has spun-off and created Phialogics, a preclinical biotech startup dedicated to developing next generation biologics that rebalance the immune response in acute and chronic inflammation. The startup is working on cell-type-specific immune checkpoint activators to prevent multi-organ failure in autoimmune diseases. Phialogics' disruptive approach aims to maximize therapeutic impact while reducing side effects in the treatment of autoimmunity. Among other things, this should prevent tissue and organ damage leading to multi-organ failure in critical care disorders.

Onena Medicines
Is a biopharmaceutical company building a pipeline of first-in-class antibody medicines to treat recurrent and metastatic cancers and selected rare diseases. Onena’s drugs neutralize a new class of secreted ancient growth factors, conserved across species, called Dual SMAD Inhibiting Proteins (DSIPs), that program cancer cells to grow and resist chemotherapy. Blocking DSIPs, as demonstrated in-vivo by Onena, simultaneously reactivates physiological TGF-β and BMP signaling and elicits cellular reprogramming, resulting in cancer cells accepting environmental cell death signals from BMPs and Activins. Onena has developed a proprietary AI-centric antibody drug discovery platform that rapidly generates anti-DSIP neutralizing antibodies, even when no crystal structure of the antigen is available. OMED-101, Onena’s anti-LEFTY1/2 lead candidate antibody, has demonstrated broad efficacy against breast, colorectal and brain cancers without observable toxicities in preclinical models. Through its unique platform, Onena Medicines has discovered several DSIPs and aims to advance multiple neutralizing DSIP antibody drugs into clinical development in the next three years.

(RAN)