Table 2.
Major startups founded in the second decade of E3 ubiquitin drug discovery between 2011 and 2020.
| Companies | Founded | IPO | Bedrock Science/Technology | Broad Therapeutic Areas |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mission Therapeutics | 2011 | No | Designing inhibitors to target specific disease-associated deubiquitinating enzymes (DUBs). | Acute Kidney Injury, Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, Familial Parkinson’s Disease |
| Nurix Therapeutics | 2012 | Yes (2020) | Utilising DELigase™ drug discovery platform to harness an E3 ligase to ubiquitinate disease-associated proteins and also to discover novel E3 ligase inhibitors for increasing the target proteins. | Cancers, and Autoimmune Diseases |
| Arvinas | 2013 | Yes (2018) | PROTAC® discovery engine and “Arvinas Rules” (alternative to “Rule of 5”) to create PROTAC degrader drugs. | Cancers, and Neural Disorders (Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s) |
| C4 Therapeutics | 2016 | Yes (2020) | C4T TORPEDO™ platform (Target ORiented ProtEin Degrader Optimizer) for catalysing discovery of degrader drugs. Working with two different types of degraders MonoDACs™ and BiDACs™. | Cancers |
| Kymera Therapeutics | 2016 | Yes (2020) | Pegasus platform for designing degrader drugs. | Cancers, and Immune Diseases |
| Captor Therapeutics | 2017 | Expected soon (2021) | Optigrade™ technolgy platform for targeted protein degradation (TPD) platform. | Cancers, and Autoimmune Diseases |
| Amphista Therapeutics | 2017 | No | Working with bifunctional molecules ‘Amphistas’ for targeted protein degradation. | Cancers, and Neural Disorders |
| Cullgen | 2018 | No | Working with uSMITE™ technology to explore cullin-RING E3 ubiquitin ligases (CRLs) for targeted protein degradation. | Cancers, and Immune Diseases |
| Polyprox Therapeutics | 2018 | No | Polyproxin® platform to exploit protein-protein interactions for harnessing proteostasis networks and targeted protein degradation. | Cancers |
| Generian Pharmaceuticals | 2019 | No | Exploiting E3 ligase biology to modulate the activity of network regulators and therapeutic targets TFEB and AMPK. | Autophagy and Lysosomal Storage Diseases, and Metabolic and Mitochondrial Function Disorders |
| Monte Rosa Therapeutics | 2020 | No | Exploring the capacity of glycine loop degrons for targeted protein degradation of disease-causing proteins like transcription factors and adaptor proteins using E3 ligases. | Cancers, and Genomically-Defined Diseases |