Life science incubator invests in early stage precision medicine biotech

BioCity, the pioneering life science incubator and business collective, has today announced an unspecified investment in precision medicine biotech, Kinomica, via the Innovate UK Precision Medicine Investment Accelerator.

Spun out from Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, Kinomica is an early stage precision medicine biotech developing novel technologies for companion diagnostics (CDx) and therapeutic development in precision medicines.

Graduates of the BioCity Accelerator, and now based at BioCity’s Alderley Park facility in Cheshire, Kinomica has developed a powerful suite of advanced proprietary bioinformatics and phosphoproteomic analytical methods.

Flagship innovation, KinoScan will focus on the field of oncology, working in collaboration with pharma to improve the monitoring of drug efficacy and response, and for the discovery of novel biomarkers to aid patient stratification and support superior clinical trial performance.

Although initially focused on oncology, KinoScan has potential applications in other therapeutic areas such as autoimmune diseases, rheumatoid arthritis and neurological diseases.

Spun out in 2016 and based on the seminal work by Prof Pedro Cutillas as published by Nature, Kinomica has already worked in collaboration with big pharma, successfully applying its kinase analysis with on-market drugs.

The development of companion diagnostics and the advancement of precision medicine is a key priority for the UK Government.

This is the latest investment announcement by BioCity, which is increasingly positioning itself as a leading life science investor.

To date, BioCity has made investments in 29 life science ventures. It specialises in seed funding via convertible loans for very early stage ventures and co-investment in growing life science ventures.

Claire Brown, director of investment for BioCity, said: “We believe Kinomica are at the forefront of a new area.

“While genomic approaches have been successful in allowing the stratifying of patients, increasingly, understanding the molecular ‘re-wiring’ of tumours, such as that provided by KinoScan, is critical.

“Kinomica provides unique insights that pharma will be able to leverage, as evidenced by the traction already made to date with key partners in this sector.”

Jane Theaker, Kinomica chief executive, said: “We are really excited that our pharma customers and investors see the value of cell-signal profiling to gain insights that have a huge positive impact on patients’ lives.

“Our proprietary proteomics algorithms and database 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 next-generation sequencing.”