Firm hopes novel class of single-chain proteins will address targets intractable to antibodies.
Young Belgium-based biopharmaceutical company Complix raised €5 million (about $6.10 million) in a Series A financing round co-led by Vesalius Biocapital and LRM. The firm says that the funds will allow it to start developing a pipeline of therapeutic products based on its Alphabody™ platform.
Alphabodies are small, single-chain proteins that are about 10–15 times smaller than antibodies, Complix explains. The firm claims that the molecules demonstrate unique structural and functional properties that make them ideally suited for targets that are hard to address using antibodies or other types of therapeutic protein scaffolds.
In addition, Alphabodies can be designed with more than one antigen binding site on their surface, which allows multispecific target binding, Complix states. They can also be fused to one another or to other classes of proteins to create multivalent or multifunctional binding constructs and are highly stable, demonstrating melting temperatures of above 120°C.
Complix aims to concentrate its drug development activities on Alphabody-based therapies for autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and multiple sclerosis as well as infectious diseases including influenza, HIV, and RSV.
