Targeted Protein Degradation (TPD) has developed rapidly in recent years, representing an unprecedented opportunity of new drug research and development.
Innovo Therapeutics (Chinese:医诺康) recently completed nearly CNY 100 million (USD 14.74 million) in an angel round led by Ming Bioventures and Chase Capital, Harmony Investment and Jiangsu Industrial Technology Institute also took apart. Potential Capital served as an exclusive financial advisor.
The funds will be mainly used for the expansion and application of two targeted protein degradation platforms to promote the R&D of multiple tumor and tumor immune drug pipelines. In addition, the company has recently acquired global rights to the acute myeloid leukemia (AML) pipeline, which will be advanced to clinical trials in 2023.
Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, Innovo Therapeutics is a Sino-US joint venture anti-cancer drug R&D company. Its core team has decades of successful drug development experience in total, especially in the field of targeted protein degradation.
Compared with traditional inhibitors, targeted protein degradation technology helps to overcome the drug resistance problem of tumor therapeutic drugs, and can act on "undruggable" proteins and conduct drug research and development for more tumor targets.
However, there are also many challenges in targeting protein degradation. PROTAC (proteolysis-targeting chimeras) faces the challenges of medicinal chemistry, and molecular glues face challenges such as target limitation and intractability.
Innovo Therapeutics has established two complementary platforms to overcome current challenges. Meanwhile, it has also built an independent and efficient comprehensive screening system to expand the high-quality compound library.
“We are very optimistic about the PROTAC field, and we are very happy to work with an excellent start-up company like Innovo Therapeutics to help the company develop rapidly,” said Ming Bioventures.
The domestic competitors of Innovo Therapeutics include Gluetacs Therapeutics, Cullgen, Meizer Pharma, Chengdu Fendi Pharmaceutical and Leading Tac Pharma.