Promis­ing au­toim­mune biotech bought out as celi­ac drug heads for the clin­ic with a fresh in­fu­sion of cash

Af­ter four years of pre­clin­i­cal work, one of the more promis­ing com­pa­nies in the hunt for a drug to treat celi­ac dis­ease is get­ting bought out by a part­ner, which will now get a new in­fu­sion of cash to dri­ve the lead drug in­to its first clin­i­cal tri­als.

Kanyos Bio, orig­i­nal­ly formed in 2015 in a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Cam­bridge-based Swiss biotech Anokion and the Japan­ese Astel­las, has been ac­quired by Anokion, which land­ed $40 mil­lion in Se­ries B fi­nanc­ing to bring its Kan-101 pro­gram in­to clin­i­cal tri­als. The plat­form us­es an anti­gen-spe­cif­ic treat­ment to tar­get the au­to-im­mune dis­ease of­ten pop­u­lar­ly thought of as a gluten al­ler­gy. They plan to file an in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al new drug ap­pli­ca­tion with the FDA by the end of the year.

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