Crescendo Raises GBP4.5m For Development Of Antibody Technology Platforms

Crescendo Biologics has raised GBP4.5m in a seed-funding led by Sofinnova Partners, to advance the development of its fragment antibody technology platforms.

The company claims that the technology platforms will enable them to generate diverse, stable and optimised human heavy chain (VH) fragments, the smallest functional binding units of an antibody molecule.

The company said that the fragments offer several advantages as starting points for the development of novel therapeutics, such as: they can be administered topically by inhaled and oral routes by injection; they provide great flexibility in format of the product, including bi-specific targeting; they are easy to manufacture and stable; and they have the potential to target binding sites inaccessible to conventional antibodies.

According to the company, the transgenic mouse platform has the potential to rapidly and predictably generate human VH fragments that have high affinity and solubility, and no requirement for humanisation. This is combined with in vitro ribosome display technology which offers advantages in antibody optimisation.

Mike Romanos, CSO at Crescendo Biologics, said: “This substantial funding from experienced life sciences investors provides a powerful validation of our approach to creating next-generation targeted biological therapeutics based on fragment antibodies. With the funding in place, we will be able to accelerate the development of our technology platforms and advance their application to in-house projects.”