Alys Pharmaceuticals launches with $100m financing from Medicxi to advance immuno-dermatology focused pipeline
Originating from the aggregation of six Medicxi companies, Alys has a pipeline of program and platforms targeting several dermatological indications.
Francesco De Rubertis, chairman of Alys Pharmaceuticals and partner at Medicxi, commented: “We believe that bringing together several asset-centric companies with a phenomenal team will power up Alys to transform innovation in immuno-dermatology. Alys manages a broad pipeline of assets with diverse risk profiles and will hugely benefit from this change of scale and facilitated access to capital.”
The company believes that emerging indications such as atopic dermatitis, vitiligo, alopecia areata and chronic spontaneous urticaria, will see the next breakthroughs in dermatological advancements.
Alys’ pipeline also includes programs focused on under served indications such as mastocytosis, cutaneous T-cell lymphoma or prevention of skin side effects of oncology therapies.
In addition, Alys is currently working with several institutions including Institut Gustave Roussy, UMass Chan Medical School, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Georgia Institute of Technology and Empa and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science & Technology.
“It is uniquely exciting to oversee such a rich and diverse pipeline, bringing forward modalities that will break new ground in dermatology, including peptides, sophisticated antibodies, or vectorized siRNA,” said Professor John Harris, chief innovation officer of Alys Pharmaceuticals and chair of dermatology at UMass Chan Medical School.
With more than a dozen active programs, Alys is anticipating further pipeline growth from its platforms, inflammatory diseases, autoimmune diseases, dermatology supportive care for cancer patients and rare dermatoses.
Over the next three years, the company aims to deliver between seven to ten clinical proof-of-concept (POC) readouts, and potentially at least one program to advance to registrational studies.
Alys combines the assets and platforms of Aldena Therapeutics, Graegis Pharmaceuticals, Granular Therapeutics, Klirna Biotech, Nira Biosciences and Vimela Therapeutics.
