Attec, one of the trailblazers in protein degradation, gained capital favor for its intellectual property rights over its optical screening platform and novel protein degradation technology.
Pharmaceutical e-commerce
Attec(Chinese:阿泰克) announced the completion of its pre-Series A financing round led by Sequoia China, with no specific sum disclosed. The fund will be used for the R&D of novel induced protein degradation drugs based on ATTEC technology, expansion of the R&D team, and design, modification and validation of small molecules.
Attec is a drug discovery company focusing on protein degradation. The company is committed to providing new therapeutic solutions for ‘untargetable’ proteins or ‘undruggable’ targets based on a novel small molecule glue technology. It has multiple pipelines of products under development and owns its intellectual property rights.
Protein degradation is one of the technologies that could potentially overcome the problem of 'undruggable' targets. PROTAC develops fastest among all kinds of protein degradation technologies. Nearly 1,000 patents related to the technology have been applied, and pharma giants, especially those of the United States, hold a monopoly in this field. Therefore, Chinese firms that use PROTAC for drug discovery cannot bypass intellectual property rights monopolized by foreign firms, thus their development is probably limited.
For reasons aforementioned, it's pressing for Chinese pharmaceutical industry to develop degradation technologies other than PROTAC to blaze a trail and gain the upper hand in the new field. While, Attec is one of the few companies focusing on ATTEC, another protein degradation technologies. The company’s small molecule glue screening technology can complete high-throughput target screening with high efficiency and low cost.
The founder of Attec, Dr. Yu Ding, is a professor of the School of Life Sciences at Fudan University and has published more than 40 papers in journals such as Nature and Cell Research.
Capitalizing on the oblique-incidence reflectivity difference method developed by Yiyan Fei, associate researcher of Fudan University, Attec mastered the ATTEC small molecule glue screening technology and owned its optical screening platform. Based on that technology, the company can screen and validate tens of thousands of small molecules on one single chip.
Attec has established a team composed of high-throughput screening, drug design and pharmacology. The four projects in its first product pipeline all target hard-to-drug targets with high clinical demands.
The competitors of Attec include PAQ Therapeutics, Merzer Pharma(Chinese:美志医药), Cullgen(Chinese:睿跃).