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British Patient Capital announces £10m investment into Curve Therapeutics

Press release 27 February 2024

British Patient Capital has made a £10m investment into Southampton-based biotechnology company Curve Therapeutics (“Curve”), through its Future Fund: Breakthrough programme and co-investment programme.

Curve is a private biotechnology company pioneering an intracellular screening platform addressing complex and challenging disease targets. The platform, Microcycle®, enables the direct discovery of biologically active molecules against targets that have been difficult to address using conventional drug discovery methods. By using Microcycle®, Curve is developing a pipeline of first in class cancer treatments.

The investment is part of Curve’s £40.5m Series A financing round and will see British Patient Capital join other investors including Pfizer Ventures, Columbus Venture Partners, Advent Life Sciences and Epidarex Capital.

The investment will enable Curve to progress development of its assets rapidly towards clinical development and to expand the discovery platform beyond challenging and complex intracellular protein targets.

The UK is a world leader in life sciences and Curve Therapeutics is yet another example of how this country continues to push the boundaries of innovation. Curve is developing a pipeline of first in class cancer treatments using its drug discovery platform. We are delighted to support them as they embark on the next steps in their growth journey. Ian Connatty, Managing Director, Direct & Co-investment, British Patient Capital
We are pleased to welcome British Patient Capital alongside our existing strong syndicate of investors. Curve’s Microcycle platform is a powerful tool for drug discovery, enabling an unparalleled advantage in the discovery of functional hits and leads. We look forward to maximising the potential of our platform to further develop a rich pipeline of programmes with the potential to treat unmet clinical needs in a diverse range of diseases, including cancer. Simon Kerry PhD, MBA, Chief Executive Officer, Curve Therapeutics

The £375m Future Fund: Breakthrough programme invests in Research and Development-intensive UK companies with cutting edge technologies. In the recent Autumn Statement, the Chancellor announced that the Future Fund: Breakthrough programme is being extended with at least an additional £50m to invest in high-growth, innovative firms. 

Further Information

Notes to editors

About British Patient Capital

British Patient Capital Limited is a wholly owned commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank plc, the UK government’s economic development bank. Its mission is to enable long-term investment in innovative firms led by ambitious entrepreneurs who want to build large-scale businesses. Launched in June 2018, British Patient Capital has more than £3bn of assets under management, investing in venture and venture growth capital to support high growth potential innovative UK businesses in accessing the long-term financing they require to scale up. Find out more on British Patient Capital.

British Business Bank plc and its subsidiary entities are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. They are not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A complete legal structure chart for British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries can be found on the British Business Bank plc website.

British Patient Capital makes commitments and invests on its own behalf and on behalf of third-party investors whose investments British Patient Capital manages.

The transaction described above does not constitute or imply any endorsement, warranty or recommendation by the UK government, the British Business Bank plc, its subsidiaries or any other party in respect of Curve Therapeutics or its products or services.

About Curve Therapeutics

Curve Therapeutics is a private biotechnology company pioneering a revolutionary intracellular screening platform to enable the discovery of innovative therapeutics that address complex and challenging disease targets with the potential to transform the lives of patients. Curve originated from world-leading Microcycle® research conducted by Professor Tavassoli’s group in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Southampton, UK. Curve is backed by blue chip investors including Advent Life Sciences, Epidarex Capital, Pfizer Ventures, Columbus Venture Partners and British Patient Capital. Curve has a US$1.7bn global research collaboration with MSD the trade name of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ USA, to discover and validate modulators of up to five therapeutic targets using its Microcycle® technology, initially for oncology and neurology indications. For more information visit: www.curvetx.com

About Curve’s Microcycle® platform

Curve has developed an IP-protected, mammalian cell platform technology for functional screening and enrichment of diverse hexameric cyclic peptide Microcycle® libraries to identify those library members that have the desired biological activity against a therapeutic target. Curve’s platform allows direct screening for biologically active library members inside mammalian cells and facilitates small molecule hit-to-lead programmes. A key advantage of the technology is that both the library and the target are present in all of their native conformations within a cell. Uniquely, the compact size and rigid structure of Microcycles® enables the design of non-peptide small molecule leads. The platform can be used for a wide range of therapeutically relevant targets, including protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions and has been used by Curve to develop a pipeline of cancer programmes against targets including a dual HIF-1/HIF-2 inhibitor and an inhibitor of ATIC homodimerization.

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