Lille, 5 December 2018 – Elasmogen wins another prestigious award during the 7th Edition of BioFIT. BioFIT is one of Europe’s leading business conventions for technology transfer, academia-industry collaborations and early-stage innovations in the field of Life Sciences. It is also becoming an important marketplace for seed investment in Life Sciences by facilitating early-stage financing deals and gives participants an opportunity to access information about current events and trends in investment, seed capital and venture capital in Life Sciences to fast-track bioentrepreneurship.
Among the 300 start-ups participating in BioFIT 2018, over 80 applications to pitch at the Start-up Slams were received; only the 20 most promising, chosen by a panel of international experts, were given the opportunity to present their project to a panel. Elasmogen was selected for the award of ‘most innovative start-up’.
Commenting on this award, Elasmogen CEO Caroline Barelle said: “I am thrilled that Elasmogen is recognised for the significant innovative potential of our technology and this award is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the entire Elasmogen team. In just a short period of time, our company has gained an international reputation and I look forward to taking this technology to market.”
Spun-out from the University of Aberdeen in 2016, Elasmogen is developing soloMERs: fully humanized, next generation, single chain therapeutics for auto-inflammatory diseases, ophthalmology, oncology and intracellular delivery. soloMERs are proprietary humanized clinical candidates derived from VNARS (variable new-antigen receptors) which exist naturally in sharks as high affinity binding domains. With a different ancestral origin from antibodies this example of 400 million year old convergent evolution places VNARs outside of the complex patent landscape that describes and protects antibody drug discovery and has produced the smallest (9% of the size of an antibody) and most robust naturally occurring binding domain. Elasmogen is unique in its capacity to isolate and develop soloMERs, with a multi-layered IP position covering the platform, formats, products and process including an exclusive license to over 20 patents granted in the US, Europe and other territories.