Securing Various FIs Including Asset Management Firms and Venture Capital
Highly Praised Technology for Targeted Protein Degradation in Hematologic Cancer Treatment
Biotech company Ubix Therapeutics has secured new investments this year. It is gaining recognition as a major player in the biotech industry due to its targeted protein degradation technology for treating blood cancer.
According to the investment banking (IB) industry on the 28th, Ubix Therapeutics recently successfully closed a Series C round worth 12 billion KRW. This round included various financial investors (FIs) such as Quad Asset Management, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, Atinum Investment, UTC Investment, Medytox Venture Investment, Scale-Up Partners, Jin & Partners, and BNH Investment.
Among them, Atinum Investment and UTC Investment followed up with additional investments after their participation in the 2020 Series B round. Mirae Asset Venture Investment also increased its funding following its initial investment in the 2019 Series A round.
Founded in June 2018, Ubix Therapeutics has attracted attention by challenging new drug development based on a novel platform technology called PROTAC, which degrades targeted proteins. PROTAC is an inhibitor technology that binds disease-related target proteins near E3 ligase, which initiates the protein degradation system, thereby facilitating easy degradation of the target proteins.
Ubix Therapeutics’ founder and CEO, Seobo Kwang, graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in Microbiology and earned a master’s degree in Immunology from the same university’s graduate school. He subsequently worked at Chongwha Pharmaceutical, Genexine, SK Telecom’s in vitro diagnostics business division, and the bio-specialized investment firm Lifecore Partners.
Ubix Therapeutics demonstrated its competitiveness last year by signing a joint research and development agreement with SK Biopharm. They are conducting joint R&D applying the Degraducer® platform technology, a targeted protein degradation technology, to discover anticancer drugs including immuno-oncology agents and to carry out early clinical trials.
Recently, a research paper on Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) degraders for treating B-cell lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, was published online in "Blood Advances," an international journal issued by the American Society of Hematology (ASH). The paper is titled "Oral protein degraders that degrade wild-type (WT) and mutant BTK proteins in human blood cancer cell line-derived mouse models."
Ubix Therapeutics is currently conducting preclinical toxicity tests for its protein degrader drug candidates and plans to initiate clinical trials next year.
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