New biotech company Confo Therapeutics launched by VIB and Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Capricorn Venture Partners leads 1st financing round of € 3 million
The establishment of Confo Therapeutics, a spin-off of VIB and Vrije Universiteit Brussel, was announced today. A consortium led by Capricorn Health-Tech Fund with the participation of Qbic and SOFI contributed € 3 million in the first institutional round of investment. These resources will be used to develop further the CONFO® technology platform and initiate drug discovery programs.
Confo Therapeutics originates from the CONFO® technology developed by Prof. Jan Steyaert and his team (VIB/Vrije Universiteit Brussel). For the first time, this technology allows medically relevant GPCRs (G-protein coupled receptors) to be stabilized in their active functional state, which is essential for drug discovery. Confo Therapeutics will start with a team of six employees, under the supervision of Stephane van Rooijen, formerly from Genzyme and Viropharma.
The technology tackles challenges of protein conformation in the development of new drugs
G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are attractive drug targets in the treatment of a wide range of conditions, because they play an essential part in many life processes and therefore also in diseases. GPCRs are on-off switches located in the cell membrane and pass signals from outside into the cell through conformational changes in their structure. In the case of diseases, these signals are not passed on properly.
The Steyaert Lab, in collaboration with the lab of Prof. Brian Kobilka (Stanford University), was the first to succeed in freezing these switches in their “on state” using CONFO® single domain antibodies. In this state, hidden cavities become accessible to small molecules. These small molecules are the starting point for the development of innovative drugs that bind in these hidden cavities in a specific and targeted manner, ensuring that the correct GPCR is switched on and that the desired signal is correctly passed on. This technology forms the basis of Confo Therapeutics to build a portfolio of pre-clinical development programs in therapeutically relevant disease domains.
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