A first fundraiser for Kinomica Ltd
Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and Queen Mary Innovations (QMI) are delighted to announce a first fundraise for Kinomica Ltd, an innovative R&D company specialising in cell-signal activity profiling for drug discovery and companion diagnostics development.
Kinomica’s founders, Dr Pedro Cutillas, Dr David Britton and Professor John Gribben, assisted by Dr Andrew Thompson (Inviva Consulting) and Jane Theaker (DataGC Solutions) – who recently joined the team as CEO – raised just under £1million from an Innovate UK Grant Award and private investors (led by BioCity); to drive the business, recruit senior management and further develop one of their tests which predicts midostaurin response in acute myeloid leukaemia.
Kinomica is built on proprietary phosphoproteomics & bioinformatics technologies developed by Dr Pedro Cutillas and his colleagues at QMUL that will allow a bespoke companion diagnostics approach to guiding targeted and immune cancer therapies. Kinomica has already worked with a number of blue chip Pharma companies to elucidate mode of action, potential causes of resistance and identify patient selection biomarkers to predict response to their drugs.
Kinomica CEO, Jane Theaker, commented “We are really excited that our Pharma customers and investors see the value of cell-signal activity profiling to gain insights that have a huge positive impact on patients’ lives. Our proprietary proteomics algorithms and databases allows us to better identify drug targets, personalise drug treatments and develop diagnostics. While the genomics revolution in personalised medicine was driven by NGS, our KinoScan™ technology is proteomic’s next generation sequencing”
Dr Pedro Cutillas, Principal Investigator and Reader at QMUL commented that “I am very excited about the potential of Kinomica to deliver truly personalized medicine. This investment will make possible the translation of our research at Barts Cancer Institute into products that can benefit cancer patients and society”
Dr David Britton, a former post-doctoral scientist in Pedro’s team and now CSO at Kinomica, commented that “we have reached an inflection point, where the field of precision medicine has come to realise that genomics cannot provide the full picture and phosphoproteomics combined with Kinomica’s proprietary bioinformatics solutions are essential tools for drug or immune therapy response predictions”
Dr Michele Hill-Perkins of QMI said “ We are very pleased to have completed an exclusive licence of IP to Kinomica that will enable the commercial development of bespoke companion diagnostics for cancer patients. This exciting approach should enable a step change in providing the right therapy for each patient.”
For More information please contact:
QMI
Dr Michele Hill-Perkins – Head of Technology Transfer (BioPharma)
T: +44 (0)20 7882 5581
M: +44 (0)7825402975
