Swiss biotech Innunity raises $179,000 grant from Venture Kick
What's the deal? Innunity TherapeuticsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a University of Zurich spin-off, has won a US$137.5K (roughly $179,000) grant from Venture KickDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → to advance a new treatment for chronic inflammatory diseases driven by the innate immune system.
What's the endgame? The Schlieren-based startup is developing INNU-1, an oral drug meant to calm an overactive immune response. It targets the start of the inflammation cascade, aiming to help patients for whom current therapies — which mostly act on downstream mechanisms — fall short.
Innunity plans to first test INNU-1 in mucocutaneous Behçet's disease, a rare condition affecting the skin and mouth where a therapy's effect shows relatively quickly. If successful, it intends to apply the drug to more common diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and multiple sclerosis (MS), which together affect nearly 10 million people worldwide.
Where the money goes: The grant will fund computational methods combined with validated lab tests to develop new compounds and move closer to selecting a development candidate.
Innunity was co-founded by chief executive officer Dr. Antonios Katsoulas, mentor Prof. Dr. Thorsten Buch, and chief operating officer Dr. Barna Gal. The team combines expertise in immunology, drug development, and translating scientific findings into new therapies.
Why now? "Venture Kick challenged us to translate complex immunology into a clear business case within minutes," Katsoulas said. He added that the support "comes at exactly the right time for Innunity." (Translated from German.)
The signal: Innunity's long-term goal is a broad therapeutic pipeline, and a clinical proof of concept in Behçet's disease could open the door, since the same biological pathway features in several major inflammatory diseases. Early-stage grants like this one remain a key route for Swiss university spin-offs to reach their first development milestones.
Read more: moneycab.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
