Bicycle signs licensing deal with EPFL and raises seed funding

Licensing | Funding

Biotech start-up Bicycle Therapeutics Ltd has signed a license agreement with the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, as it secured additional seed funding from SR One, the corporate venture fund of GlaxoSmithKline, and the venture capital firm SV Life Sciences.

Bicycle, a spin-out from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), Cambridge is based at the Babraham Research Campus, also in Cambridge, UK. Its technology platform is based on research at the LMB of the founding scientists, Gregory Winter, the scientific founder of two other biotechs, Cambridge Antibody Technology and Domantis, and Christian Heinis. Christian Heinis is currently Assistant Professor at the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at EPFL. The license with EPFL cements the ongoing relationship between Bicycle and Heinis’ laboratory.

Bicycle is developing a technology platform for the identification and optimisation of chemically constrained cyclic peptides with high target specificity and binding affinity. These entities are designed to combine the best properties of small molecule and protein drugs.

“Christian Heinis and his group are doing some very elegant work at EPFL on bicyclic peptides. I am delighted that Bicycle Therapeutics will now have the ability to benefit from access to this work,” Winter said.

Bicycle was founded in July 2009, and received initial seed funding from Atlas Venture and Novartis Venture Fund.