Lycia Therapeutics

About Lycia Therapeutics

Lycia Therapeutics, established in 2019, is a biotechnology firm focused on the degradation of extracellular proteins to address a range of diseases. The company was founded by Nobel Laureate Professor Carolyn Bertozzi based on her pioneering research at Stanford University in bioorthogonal chemistry and lysosome-targeting chimeras (LYTACs). Dr. Bertozzi's work, which earned her the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, laid the scientific foundation for the company's platform. Her extensive research into cell surface glycosylation and its connection to diseases like cancer and inflammation directly informs Lycia's therapeutic strategy.

The company was incubated within Versant Ventures' Inception Discovery Engine and launched from stealth in June 2020 with a $50 million Series A financing commitment from Versant. This was followed by a $70 million Series B round in September 2021 and an oversubscribed $106.6 million Series C financing in May 2024, bringing total funding to over $227 million. These funds are earmarked for advancing its pipeline of LYTAC degraders toward clinical trials, particularly for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

Lycia's business model centers on developing its proprietary LYTAC platform to create first-in-class therapeutics. Revenue is generated through strategic collaborations with major pharmaceutical companies. A significant partnership was formed in August 2021 with Eli Lilly and Company to discover and develop novel degraders for immunology and pain targets. This deal included a $35 million upfront payment to Lycia, with the potential for over $1.6 billion in milestone payments plus sales royalties.

The core of Lycia's operation is its LYTAC technology, which addresses a critical gap in protein degradation therapy. While many existing approaches like PROTACs target proteins inside the cell, approximately 40% of proteins—including many linked to disease—are located on the cell surface or circulate outside the cell, making them inaccessible to these methods. Lycia's LYTACs are bifunctional molecules designed to overcome this limitation. One part of the LYTAC binds to a disease-causing extracellular protein, and the other part binds to a cell surface receptor that traffics to the lysosome, the cell's natural waste disposal system. This mechanism effectively captures and drags target proteins into the cell to be destroyed by the lysosome. This approach enables the degradation of previously "undruggable" targets, offering potential treatments for a wide array of conditions, including cancer, autoimmune diseases, and inflammatory disorders.