kyron.bio raises €5.5m to use glycan engineering for advanced drug design

Biotechnology company kyron.bio today announced a €5.5 million funding round.

The seed funding round was led by HCVC, with the participation of Verve Ventures, Entrepreneur First, Saras Capital, and numerous reputable angel investors.

The funds will accelerate the development of kyron.bio’s proprietary glycan-engineering platform, expand the kyron.bio team and fuel preclinical studies.

Additionally, the funding coincides with the launch of the company’s EIC Transition project, backed by the European Innovation Council.

The company’s vision is to open a new design space for next-generation therapeutics using glycans and to partner with pharmaceutical companies to develop safer, more potent treatments for patients.

kyron.bio focuses its technology specifically on antibody therapeutics, a majorly important class of drugs that harness the precision of the immune system to treat a wide range of diseases, including cancer and autoimmune diseases.

Dr Emilia McLaughlin, CEO & Founder of kyron.bio, said: “To date, glycans have been massively under-exploited, limiting their potential in drug design.

“By achieving comprehensive control over glycosylation in a fully scalable manner, we have unlocked the possibility to use precision glycosylation in drug design.

“This transforms glycans into a design tool for the first time, opening up new treatment avenues for patients.

“Securing this fundraising round brings us closer to our goal of delivering precision glycan-engineered therapeutics to patients.”

One of the major problems with antibody therapeutics is the patient’s immune system recognising the treatment as foreign and attacking it.

This immune response can be harmful and render the therapeutic ineffective.

As drug design becomes more complex and therefore more foreign to the human immune system, this issue is an increasing burden to biopharma companies

This unwanted immune attack is problematic for patients, particularly those with chronic diseases that are treated over a long period of time.

It also prevents many novel therapies from making it through the critical Phase I stage of clinical trials, where drug safety is assessed.

kyron.bio has pioneered a platform to fully control the process of N-glycosylation, the cellular mechanism that adds glycans to the surface of therapeutics.

In standard biomanufacturing, this process is highly inconsistent, producing a mix of glycan structures that can trigger immune responses or reduce therapeutic efficacy.

kyron.bio’s breakthrough enables, for the first time, the precise use of specific glycans to prevent unwanted immune attack.

This platform is offered as a scalable, plug-and-play solution compatible with standard biopharma manufacturing techniques.

Alexis Houssou, Founder & Managing Partner at HCVC, said: “kyron.bio’s technology bridges a massive gap in therapeutics design.

“Their breakthrough in glycan control could shift the paradigm for antibody therapies, and we’re proud to support their vision.”