Kodiform Therapeutics, a new joint spin-out company from The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and the University of Oxford, has received a major seed funding investment from venture creation firm Oxford Science Enterprises.
Kodiform Therapeutics is a drug discovery company with an initial focus on cancer. It aims to build on the expertise of its co-founders, the ICR's Professor Terry Rabbitts and Oxford's Professor Angela Russell, to create first-in-class small molecules against intrinsically disordered protein targets.
The company creation has been led by the ICR in partnership with Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) a venture creation firm that provides investment and support to transformational businesses with links to the Oxford science cluster and Oxford University Innovation (OUI), the university’s technology transfer office.
Kodiform Therapeutics will have a focus on developing small molecules that could become cancer drugs.
Professor Rabbitts is a renowned molecular immunologist who worked at the University of Oxford and the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge before joining the ICR.
He has particular expertise in developing technologies that use intracellular antibody fragments – fragments of molecules that 'stick' to proteins of interest inside cells – to target proteins that drive disease.
Supporting innovation
Working alongside Professor Rabbitts, the ICR's Business and Innovation Office (BIO) led on the spin-out process for the new company.
Several companies have been spun out from the ICR's research in recent years, including Monte Rosa Therapeutics, a protein degradation company that raised $222m from investors at its IPO on New York's NASDAQ Stock Exchange.
And last year we were one of the founders of ITCC P4 gGmBH, the first non-profit company in the world to offer access to laboratory models for systematic efficacy testing on fully-characterised paediatric tumour models.
Professor Terence Rabbitts, Professor of Molecular Immunology at the ICR and co-founder of Kodiform, said:
"Kodiform Therapeutics is an exciting initiative that will exploit our technology based on intracellular antibodies for cancer drug discovery to open the way to tackle the world of hard-to-drug targets, such as transcription factors.
"The development of Kodiform required the hard work of several key partners including staff in the ICR's Business and Innovation Office, who played a timely and integral part in facilitating incorporation of the company."
Getting our science out into the world
Dr Jon Wilkinson, Director of Business and Innovation at the ICR, said:
"We're delighted to announce the creation of Kodiform and look forward to watching it grow, as it forges a new and innovative path towards creating small molecule drugs that could hit hard-to-target, cancer-driving proteins. It's been a pleasure to work with the founders and founding funder Oxford Science Enterprises – and this represents a real success.
"'Spinning out' is just one of the paths we support, enabling our entrepreneurial researchers to drive discoveries closer to benefitting cancer patients – we also license out our intellectual property to partners, for example, and facilitate research collaborations with industry."
Sally Dewhurst, PhD, Investment Principal at Oxford Science Enterprises, said:
"It was a pleasure to work with the ICR on this joint spin-out. Building on the collaborative and innovative nature of the academic science from the ICR and Oxford behind Kodiform, it was clear that the ICR team were very motivated to make this process a success and were focussed on our important end goal of getting this science out into the world, where we all hope Kodiform can make a real difference to cancer patients in the long run."
Matt Carpenter, Deputy Head of Licensing & Ventures for Life Sciences at Oxford University Innovation, said:
“Oxford University Innovation (OUI) worked with ICR and OSE to help facilitate the commercialisation process to create Kodiform Therapeutics. We look forward to working to create future innovation partnerships and seeing the progress of Kodiform’s efforts to develop small molecules that could become life-saving cancer drugs.”