MILAN, Italy and SAN MATEO, Calif., January 19th, 2022 -- Dompé farmaceutici S.p.A (“Dompé”), a global biopharmaceutical company, today announced a strategic collaboration with and investment in Engitix Ltd (‘Engitix’), a biopharmaceutical company with a pioneering and proprietary human extracellular matrix (ECM) drug target discovery platform, as part of Engitix’s $54m Series A financing.

The round was co-led by Dompé, as a new investor, alongside existing investor Netherton Investments, a fund investing on behalf of Mike Platt. Gianluca Rossetti, Corporate Business Development Director at Dompé and Mike Platt, co-founder and Managing Director of BlueCrest Capital Management have joined Engitix’s board of directors.

Dompé’s agreement with Engitix includes both equity investment and a multi-year, multi-program strategic R&D collaboration to support identification of new treatments against fibrosis and liver-associated solid tumors.

Dompé will provide direct access to facilities, resources and expertise including its Exscalate structure-based drug design platform which can design new molecules following the rules of rational drug design to obtain compounds capable of interacting specifically with a tissue or regulating the biological activity of a cell or a protein. Exscalate has enabled Dompé to accelerate drug design while also identifying new applications for existing molecular entities for which potential safety is well established, potentially reducing the time between the identification of a health threat, such as COVID-19, to rapid availability of candidate drugs. (See relevant example here)

The deal enables Engitix to transition from a technology platform to a biopharmaceutical product company, with Dompé being an important shareholder and eligible for clinical and commercial milestones and royalties on marketed products developed under the collaboration.

“Our mission is to improve people's lives and we partner with the best academic and industrial groups to accelerate the research that will bring new solutions to patients' unmet needs, said Marcello Allegretti, Chief Scientific Officer of Dompé. “We look forward to working with the Engitix team to combine the power of Exscalate with Engitix’s deep understanding of the biology of the fibrosis and solid tumours microenvironment. The power of its ECM platform enables us to accelerate the clinical translation of targets beyond our four key in-house therapeutic areas of ophthalmology, metabolic disorders, oncology, and pain management”

Engitix has established a portfolio of internal programs in primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and liver metastasis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), as well as partnered drug discovery programmes in fibrosis and solid tumours using its ECM platform. The financing will be used to invest in Engitix’s internal drug discovery pipeline through IND-enabling studies, expand its ECM discovery platform and bioinformatics capabilities into new therapeutic areas, and to expand its team, facilities, and operations.

“This financing and new partnership with Dompé enables us to continue our evolution from a platform to a multi-asset, mutli-program, pre-clinical stage company and to continue to prove the value of our human ECM platform,” said Dr Giuseppe Mazza co-founder and CEO of Engitix. “We are pleased to have the continued backing of Mike Platt, and to have secured the support of Dompé as a partner and investor. This round will enable us to advance our pre-clinical programs against targets identified using our ECM platform through candidate selection and IND enabling studies.”

“I am prepared to take a risk and invest in innovative technology early, backing highly passionate teams with strong leadership. Having invested from the start, Engitix’s progress and achievements within less than two years from its seed financing have been impressive,“ said Mike Platt co-founder and Managing Director of BlueCrest Capital Management. “The value of Engitix’s platform has been proven through the partnerships it has established and the pipeline of opportunities it has built. The collaboration with Dompé propels it to the next stage and I look forward to working with the board and investors to Engitix’s full potential.”

About Dompé

Dompé is a private, rapidly scaling global biopharmaceutical company founded in Milan, Italy, with a 130-year legacy of medical innovation. The R&D department of the company is anchored by EXSCALATE, a structure-based virtual screening platform developed in-house that leverages one of the most powerful supercomputing and artificial intelligence platforms in the world. Today, Dompé employs more than 800 employees worldwide and maintains a U.S. commercial operations hub in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as an R&D presence in Boston.

About Engitix Ltd

Engitix is developing a portfolio of internal & partnered drug discovery programmes in fibrosis and solid tumours using its pioneering human extracellular matrix (ECM) platform. The use of more physiologically relevant human in vitro models is transforming the ability to identify new targets, to develop more advanced treatments and to enable a more accurate prediction of the efficacy of therapeutic candidates. It has partnerships with Dompé farmaceutici S.P.A, Takeda, and Morphic Therapeutics. Engitix was founded in 2016 to commercialise cutting-edge research at the Institute for Liver and Digestive Health, Division of Medicine, University College London (UCL). The company is headquartered in Westworks, White City Place, London, UK. A private company, Engitix investors include Netherton Investments, a fund investing on behalf of Mike Platt, and Dompé farmaceutici S.P.A (Dompé), an Italian and US-based biopharmaceutical company.