LoQus23 Therapeutics Ltd, a Cambridge, UK-based company discovering small molecule therapies that target aberrant DNA mismatch repair (MMR) to treat Huntington’s and other triplet repeat diseases (TRDs), closed a £7m extended seed funding round.
Backers included Novartis Venture Fund (NVF) and its founding investor the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF). This round follows an initial £4.5m seed investment by the DDF in 2019. Florian Muellershausen, Managing Director at NVF, will join LoQus23’s Board of Directors.
The financing will enable the company to identify a small molecule drug candidate for its lead MMR target and explore other MMR proteins for their role in somatic instability in TRDs.
Founded in 2019 by members of the Dementia Discovery Fund including Dr David Reynolds, Dr Caroline Benn, and Dr Ruth McKernan FMedsci CBE, LoQus23 is a biotech company discovering oral therapies targeting aberrant DNA mismatch repair for the treatment of Huntington’s Disease and other triplet repeat disorders. Targeting DNA mismatch repair has the potential to stop DNA instability and therefore slow neurodegeneration in these diseases.
FinSMEs
25/11/2021