Plexium has landed $28 million in Series A financing to launch a proprietary platform that can identify novel therapeutics that can modulate protein degradation to treat cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.
The platform technology, dubbed DELPhe, takes advantage of the cell’s built-in “garbage disposal” system that marks misfolded or otherwise damaged proteins for destruction. The company hopes to use the platform to advance a pipeline of drugs that target E3 ligases, the enzymes that drive recognition of protein targets.
“Inducing protein degradation by redirecting E3 ligases is an exciting therapeutic modality with immense potential to create safe and effective new medicines,” said Plexium founder and CEO Kandaswamy “Swamy” Vijayan, Ph.D., in the statement. “The levels of a vast majority of proteins in the cell are modulated by E3 ligases, including disease targets considered ‘undruggable.’ DELPhe can efficiently identify therapeutic small molecules for the precise manipulation of E3 ligases, unlocking control of disease-modifying pathways.”