Glasgow, UK – Amphista Therapeutics, a leader in next generation targeted protein degradation (TPD) approaches, today announced the closing of a $53 million (£38 million) Series B financing round from an investor syndicate co-led by Gilde Healthcare. The proceeds will be used to accelerate the company’s growing pipeline of potent and selective bifunctional molecules, known as ‘Amphistas’ to the clinic and to extend its proprietary TPD platform.
Stefan Luzi, Partner at Gilde Healthcare and incoming Supervisory Board member of Amphista Therapeutics said,
“Amphista emerged as the best-in-class protein degradation company in our comprehensive landscaping effort. We believe this stellar team, which includes pioneers in the TPD field, combined with a truly unique platform, will unlock the full therapeutic potential of a broad range of disease targets. Amphista represents a strong fit with Gilde’s longstanding strategy of identifying Europe’s leading science and of engaging with experienced drug developers to build and support high growth (bio)pharma companies.”
Amphista’s TPD approach offers a greatly improved way of treating disease, and modulating drug targets, using synthetic small molecule degraders. Amphista’s next generation bifunctional degraders use a novel set of mechanisms that make use of a wider range of the body’s own innate protein degrading proteins, instead of the very narrow set of ubiquitin E3 ligase-based mechanisms used by most other TPD companies. This proprietary approach offers the potential to overcome many of the limitations seen with current TPD approaches, providing the opportunity to treat a wider range of diseases. Amphista is focused on biological targets with a high level of clinical or genetic validation, allowing the team to focus on the translation of their novel TPD approach for clinical benefit in areas of high unmet need.
About Amphista Therapeutics
Amphista Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company creating first-in-class therapeutics that harness the body’s natural processes to selectively and efficiently degrade and remove disease-causing proteins. The company’s pipeline of novel targeted protein degradation (TPD)-based medicines is focused on challenging diseases including cancer. Founded by Advent Life Sciences, Amphista is a spin-out of TPD expert Professor Alessio Ciulli’s labs at the University of Dundee. The company has raised approximately £45M to date and is funded by leading life science investors including Gilde Healthcare, Forbion, Novartis Venture Fund, Advent Life Sciences, BioMotiv and Eli Lilly. For more information, please visit www.amphista.com.
About Gilde Healthcare
Gilde Healthcare is a specialized healthcare investor with $1.8 billion under management across two fund strategies: Venture & Growth and Private Equity. The firm operates out of offices in Utrecht (The Netherlands), Frankfurt (Germany) and Cambridge (United States).
Gilde Healthcare Venture & Growth invests in innovative companies active in (Bio)Pharmaceuticals, HealthTech and MedTech. The portfolio of the Venture & Growth fund is balanced with fast growing life science companies from Europe and North America. For more information, please visit www.gildehealthcare.com.
