Curve adds Pfizer venture arm as backer in £40.5 million financing

2024-02-27

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With a drug-development deal already in place with Merck & Co., Curve Therapeutics has now added backing from the venture arm of Pfizer to fund its internal pipeline of cancer therapies against challenging targets.

CEO Simon Kerry said the financing “will enable us to expand our team, progress our lead assets into the clinic and to expand our drug discovery platform.” Pfizer Ventures led the £40.5 million ($51 million) Series A financing, which included new investors British Patient Capital and Columbus Venture Partners, as well as former backers Advent Life Sciences and Epidarex Capital.

Curve is hoping that its Microcycle platform will enable it to discover biologically active molecules against targets that have been difficult to address using conventional drug discovery methods. The company’s pipeline includes a dual-inhibitor of HIF-1 and HIF-2, as well as an inhibitor of ATIC dimerisation that targets an important vulnerability in multiple cancers.

Marie-Claire Peakman, partner at Pfizer Ventures, remarked “Curve's platform provides an exciting new approach designed to tackle tough, high priority targets which have been difficult to progress in the past.”

The platform allows functional screening and enrichment of Microcycle libraries within the cytoplasm of mammalian cells to identify compounds that have a desired biological activity against a therapeutic target. Curve noted that the compact size of Microcycles enables their transformation to non-peptide small molecules for lead optimisation and development.

The deal signed with Merck in 2022 covers modulators of up to five therapeutic targets, initially for oncology and neurology indications, and is potentially worth up to $1.7 billion to Curve. As part of the agreement, the company is undertaking optimisation using its Microcycle technology.

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