On Thursday 23rd November Alessio joined David McBeth, VP for Entreprise and Economic Transformation at Dundee, and colleagues from the University’s RIS and Amphista therapeutics in Leeds city centre for the 2023 PraxisAuril KE awards ceremony.
The PraxisAuril KE Awards embody the high standards of UK Knowledge Exchange as a sector and recognise the people, partnerships, deals and initiatives that underpin this world-class activity. The Ceremony revealed the much-anticipated KE Awards winners for each category. The University of Dundee and Amphista were nominated as finalists in the category for “Commercialization Achievement of the Year”. Each nominees were required to give a brief speech to introduce themselves and their nomination, and David delivered the pitch for the University and Amphista. Shortly after, the usual drum-roll came: “And the winner is….”, and to our surprise and delight it was Dundee and Amphista! Georgia Chapman from Amphista and Alessio joined David on stage to receive the award, and each gave brief thanking speeches on stage, followed by the customary award-winning photographs. The evening included discussions about the challenges and opportunities in innovation and research commercialization. This award really belongs to everyone at Dundee, the company, the investors and beyond, who have contributed to bring Amphista along its journey so far and helped achieving the commercialization success that was recognized by the Award.
Brief synopsis of David McBeth’s nomination speech, which included a mention to CeTPD:
- Amphista was formed in 2017 on the basis of Prof Alessio Ciulli’s group research on targeted protein degradation (TPD)
- TPD is an entirely new approach to therapeutics – it works by reducing the levels of proteins that drive disease, opening new ways to target proteins previously thought as “undruggable” and so create medicines that matter to patient with genuine unmet needs
- Amphista develops next-generation TPD platforms and medicines. Venture Capital firm Advent Life Sciences was in from the start working with the University RIS team and the founders to develop a highly-differentiated, and crucially, innovative concept to arrive at degrader medicines.
- Rapid technological progress, first within the Ciulli Lab at Dundee, and later at BioCity, Newhouse (near Glasgow) saw series A ($7.5M) and B rounds in short order with the latter (in 2021) raising $53M and Winning a Scrip award in 2021.
The commercialization achievements for 2022 mentioned in the nomination are:
- Licensing collaborations with big pharma Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb valued at more than US$2.125bn, representing the largest deal globally to date in the TPD space
- Now >70 employees in their corporate HQ in Grant Park, Cambridge
- Recent recognition in PWC Life Sciences Future 50 high growth UK biotechs
Dundee’s role as a recognised leader in TPD is now solidified with the University’s creation of a new Centre for Targeted Protein Degradation (CeTPD) under the directorship of Ciulli. CeTPD is a flagship new Institute to the University and was praised in the recent Government’s DSIT response to the Nurse review of the research landscape (which published on the same day). CeTPD is integral to the University’s ambition to establish a Life Sciences Innovation District cluster to further foster innovation and translation at Dundee.
Read University of Dundee’s press release: Awards success for Amphista Therapeutics
