UCL spinout Engitix plans to develop therapeutics for liver fibrosis and certain cancers based on its targeted drug discovery platform.
Engitix, a UK-based drug discovery spinout from University of College London (UCL), closed a £5m ($6.4m) series A round yesterday led by an unnamed private investor.
Founded in 2016, Engitix has developed a drug discovery platform which uses specific engineered tissues to find treatments that target liver fibrosis, a condition affecting the liver’s function due to scarring, as well as certain liver and pancreatic cancers.
Engitix’s platform includes specimen drawn from the non-cellular component of specific tissues, a body known as the human extracellular matrix (ECM) where the excessive production of proteins has been connected to most chronic liver diseases.
The company believes its approach will improve on current therapeutic projects that lack human ECM in their experimental models, which it argues causes most compounds to fail during late-stage clinical trials.
The series A capital will enable Engitix to begin developing its own drugs as it…
