Auctus Biologics raised $1.5 million to convert injections with pills

Auctus Biologics, a new portfolio company of Ichor Therapeutics, announced the closure of $1.5 million in seed funding. The company will develop RPtag, a hyper-stable antibody mimetic scaffold published earlier this year in the peer-reviewed journal ACS Biochemistry, to take on conventional clinical antibody therapy as an orally bioavailable formulation. New high priority immunosenescence and gastrointestinal targets will also be pursued.

The Auctus Biologics platform could replace injections with pills for a range of therapies. This could improve the logistics and lower cost for many patients.

“The RPtag platform opens up a new frontier in biological drug discovery and development,” said Kelsey Moody, CEO at Auctus Biologics. “Although there may be significant opportunities to develop this platform as an oral formulation to replace the need for conventional intravenous infusions, we are also very excited about the prospect of deploying this technology to modulate gut micro-flora and to go after other gut targets that may drive age-associated disease and related processes.”

“This program is a testament to the excellence of our research teams and their ability to identify unique value in all its manifestations,” said Aaron Wolfe, COO at Auctus Biologics and co-inventor of the platform. “This technology was originally developed for protein expression applications. By following the data and affording the team an appropriate level of scientific freedom, we have created a robust therapeutic platform that can operate in environments where biologics are traditionally limited.”

Ichor Therapeutics is a vertically integrated pre-clinical contract research organization that broadly focuses on the study of aging and aging pathways. The company offers a number of services to support its clients and strategic priorities.

Ichor has spunout several companies.

Antoxerene was founded in 2017 and has raised $12.5 million.

Antoxerene performs pipeline testing for small molecule drugs that target protein-drug and protein-protein interactions. The platform is based on a patent-pending production technology, which enables manufacturing of impossible to express protein targets in biologically active form, at scale.

Repair Biotechnologies has raised $500,000 and was founded in 2018.

Repair Biotechnologies is engaged in developing forms of gene and protein therapy aimed at aspects of aging. Their first area of focus is reversal of age-associated thymic atrophy and consequent loss of immune function. The second is a novel means to reverse atherosclerosis by providing circulating monocytes with the ability to break down cholesterol.

RecombiPure has raised $300,000 and was founded in 2016.

RecombiPure is a biotechnology company specializing in next-generation protein expression and purification technologies. Our product offerings include patent-pending chromatography resins, columns and reagents, as well as recombinant proteins and custom protein expression services.

LysoClear has raised $750,000 and was founded in 2015.

Lysoclear is developing an enzyme therapy for the treatment of dry age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in old age.

10 thoughts on “Auctus Biologics raised $1.5 million to convert injections with pills”

  1. That’s an impossibly tiny amount of money for such an ambitious project. You won’t cover the paperwork for the ethics approval with only $1.5M.

  2. That’s an impossibly tiny amount of money for such an ambitious project. You won’t cover the paperwork for the ethics approval with only $1.5M.

  3. That’s an impossibly tiny amount of money for such an ambitious project. You won’t cover the paperwork for the ethics approval with only $1.5M.

  4. That’s an impossibly tiny amount of money for such an ambitious project. You won’t cover the paperwork for the ethics approval with only $1.5M.

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