Coultreon Biopharma has closed a nine-figure funding round to support development of a drug it licensed last year from fellow Belgium-based biotechnology company Galapagos.
The $125 million Series A funding announced Tuesday was led by Sofinnova Investments and involved nine other firms, among them Forbion, Novo Holdings, Galapagos and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals’ venture arm. It’ll help propel a drug known as COL-5671 and that’s currently in Phase 1 studies deeper into clinical testing. Coultreon intends to start a Phase 2 trial in psoriasis and ulcerative colitis and deliver early data from that study in 2027.
Formerly known as Onco3R Therapeutics, Coultreon is focused on treatments for autoimmune diseases. Many of these conditions are treated with injectable biologics that broadly suppress inflammation and, in the process, leave the body vulnerable to infections. Patients often cycle through these kinds of therapies without seeing their disease durably controlled or halted, Coultreon noted in a statement Tuesday.
Drug developers have been increasingly looking at more precise or convenient ways to tamp down the overactive immune response associated with these conditions. Some are trying to one-up existing medicines with drugs that last longer, are taken orally or simultaneously home in on multiple known drivers of inflammation. Others are trying to “reset” the immune system in one way or another.
Coultreon is working on oral drugs that target “salt-inducible kinases,” or SIKs, a family of proteins that help regulate certain immune pathways. The company believes one such protein, “SIK3,” to be a “central” player in the errant signaling associated with multiple autoimmune diseases, it said in its statement. Coultreon found one such drug that Galapagos — a large, publicly traded biotech also based in Belgium — had originally discovered. While Galapagos was trimming its research pipeline last year, Coultreon licensed that therapy, which is now known as COL-5671.
According to Coultreon, blocking the activity of SIK3, as COL-5671 does, impacts multiple other sources of inflammation such as IL-23 and TNF, two popular drug targets. The result should be “broader and more durable disease control” compared to existing medications, the company said. While that has yet to be proven, results from preclinical and early testing have given Coultreon reason to believe the drug might be useful against multiple immune disorders such as ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis.
“[Coultreon] believes SIK3 inhibition represents a fundamentally new approach to modulating immune pathways, and we look forward to moving into Phase 2 trials this year to begin generating meaningful clinical data that could reshape how these diseases are treated,” CEO and founder Pierre Raboisson wrote in an email to BioPharma Dive.
