PhoreMost Ltd, a biopharmaceutical company has been selected to receive a funding award of £1.4 mn (approximately $2.14 mn USD) from the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK, to develop its lead oncology programme targeting mutant KRAS cancers. PhoreMost’s lead therapeutic programme has identified drug candidates to a novel synthetic-lethal target for KRAS. Based on PhoreMost’s proprietary protein interference technology, the company has developed ‘Site-Seeker’, a next-generation phenotypic screening platform that can identify the best new targets for drug development and, crucially, how to drug them. The Innovate UK funding will support development of this programme.
KRAS is one of the most commonly mutated genes in cancer: it drives disease initiation and progression, and is frequently a secondary event in ‘acquired’ resistance to new targeted therapies. However, KRAS mutant cancers remain largely unaffected by the development of new targeted therapies. Each year, cancers with RAS mutations account for approximately 25,000 deaths in the UK and 120,000 in the US.
PhoreMost is developing next-generation drug discovery technologies to address previously undruggable therapeutic targets; the company’s ‘Site-Seeker’ product engine is designed to create novel and affordable drugs for cancer and other poorly treated diseases. At its core is the company’s proprietary ‘Protein Interference’ technology; a discovery platform that can systematically unmask cryptic druggable sites in the human genome and then directly link them to useful therapeutic functions in a live-cell context. PhoreMost has identified drug candidates to a novel synthetic-lethal target for KRAS, and is soliciting collaborative partners for further clinical development.
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