Antibodies are crucial in speeding up the development of new drugs in a market expected to grow to $8bn by 2025 (GlobalData). Isogenica is an antibody drug company, specialising in small-format antibodies called VHH’s. These are simple proteins, about 10% the size of traditional antibodies, and are versatile and robust, such that they can be joined in tandem to create next-generation therapies. While normally isolated from llamas, Isogenica have engineered synthetic VHH libraries which eliminate the need for long and uncertain animal immunisations, and can be mined rapidly to find new therapeutics.
Isogenica is growing through the development of a therapeutic pipeline, centred on a ‘Plug-and-Play’ platform. Using their synthetic libraries, new targeting arms can be rapidly discovered and ‘clicked’ onto the platform. This allows rapid expansion of a therapeutic pipeline which can be targeted to many different cancer types.
Marion Cubitt is the Director of Discovery at Isogenica and is responsible for providing cohesive R&D strategy across Isogenica’s partnerships and internal programmes. With a strong scientific background, Marion is seeking to use the Shott Scale up Accelerator award to build her commercial foundations through expert mentorship and training, as well as opportunities to engage with a more diverse peer network.
She Identifies mentorship as a key component for a small company as, “I have few senior leaders within my organisation to learn from, and I see mentoring as essential to my growth as a senior leader.”
It is only in the last few years that Isogenica has begun to develop its own assets. Now that the internal R&D is at a point of IP filing they are ready to pursue those larger licensing deals.
In the next nine months Isogenica will complete candidate selection on their first multispecific asset, and initiate midscale manufacturing. This asset will progress to preclinical studies during 2024, building to their next value inflection point of demonstrating in vivo efficacy for our product. They are also seeking to fundraise £5m to support preclinical development, expand board membership with biopharma expertise.
Associated Programme
