BioCopy accelerates the fight against cancer
Shorten research and development time for cancer drugs from 3 years to 12 months and significantly reduce development costs
The German-Swiss biotechnology start-up BioCopy has secured new capital of 8 million euros. This sum is an important step for the company on its mission to produce more effective cancer drugs in the shortest possible time and at significantly lower costs. The company is supported by a group of investors consisting of experienced family offices and renowned entrepreneurs. The primary goal is to gain valuable time for patients and partners from the pharmaceutical industry by reducing the research and development time of cancer drugs from 3 years to 12 months, thereby significantly lowering development costs. The focus is on the development of next-generation biotherapeutics for lung, bladder and ovarian cancer.
"According to the World Health Organization, one in two people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime by 2040," explains BioCopy CEO Matthias Wiedenfels. "We are very pleased with the support we have received from our investors so far, which will enable us to further industrialize and advance the development of highly effective biotherapeutics. With our patented solution in the precision screening of cancer targets, i.e. specific target structures on cancer cells for drugs, and our expertise in AI-supported antibody optimization, we can produce highly complex drugs faster and in significantly larger quantities. And thus gain valuable time in the fight against cancer".
The initial financial sum of 8 million euros forms a strong foundation and - like future investments - will flow primarily into high-tech. Among other things, it will be used to establish BioCopy's automated ultra-high-throughput laboratory. With the help of its own development platform, the company will greatly accelerate the production of highly effective and safe drug candidates against cancer and significantly increase the chances of success in the clinical phase. In concrete terms, this means that instead of 10 - 100 drug variants in the iterative semi-manual process, a total of 25,000 variants can be tested in parallel in the automated process.
New approaches in drug development
"The development of such drug candidates takes many years or even decades in the conventional process," adds Jörg Birkenfeld, Chief Science Officer at BioCopy. "In contrast to previous workflows in the pharmaceutical industry, we can ensure a much higher throughput with our approaches at BioCopy. With the help of existing funding and future investments, we will further expand this competitive advantage and advance the global fight against cancer."
The company specializes in the pHLA target class against cancer. The special feature: the pHLA target class addresses cancer that is hidden inside a cell and therefore cannot be detected by the immune system. BioCopy sees itself at the beginning of a revolution in drug development and plans to optimize multispecific antibodies for industrial manufacturability within the next two years, thereby significantly shortening drug development cycles. The company is also considered a pioneer in the AI-supported development of biological drug candidates. A fully automated platform is used to identify and improve suitable active substances for cancer therapy. The resulting highly quantitative and qualitative data sets are analyzed and evaluated using artificial intelligence. This innovative approach is intended to significantly shorten the development cycles of such drugs and thus considerably reduce costs. Where around 500 employees are currently needed to develop next-generation biotherapeutics, fewer than 10 employees will be required for the same process in future.
Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.
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