SBC tenant Arachos Pharma funding news

Arachos Pharma awarded Biomedical Catalyst grant to develop new anti-inflammatory medicine

Stevenage UK, 13^th August 2013:  Arachos Pharma Ltd is a new pharmaceutical company developing novel oral anti-inflammatory medicines.  It has been awarded a £1.2 million Biomedical Catalyst grant from the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board, to pursue further development of the candidate medicine AP362 for the treatment of a range of inflammatory diseases.

AP362 is an innovative oral selective glucocorticoid receptor modulator, with initial data indicating that it will have powerful anti-inflammatory action with significantly fewer side-effects than conventional therapies.  It has the potential for once-daily dosing in a wide variety of diseases such as severe eczema, rheumatoid arthritis and asthma.  The Biomedical Catalyst funding will enable Arachos Pharma to carry out preclinical work such as bulk synthesis, formulation, stability testing and characterisation of drug product, as well as safety studies.  The company will also further characterise the biological profile of AP362 to assess its potential in additional disease areas.

Arachos Pharma is in discussion with several potential investors, in order to leverage the Biomedical Catalyst funding to enable it to progress candidates through to early clinical proof-of-concept studies.

Richard Knowles, CEO of Arachos, said: “Arachos Pharma is delighted to have received this funding from the Biomedical Catalyst Fund, which brings significant validation and will enable us to demonstrate the potential of this exciting new candidate medicine.  Arachos has established itself as a start-up pharmaceutical company at the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, benefiting from the innovative environment and expertise there.  We believe that AP362 could provide a new safe, oral, once-a-day therapy for a range of inflammatory diseases, a market likely to have sales of £56bn by 2017*.”