The Catalan biotech Allox raises 9.4 million to boost its platform

BarcelonaThe Catalan biotechnology company Allox has closed a funding round of 10.5 million dollars (about 9.4 million euros) led by Asabys, through its fund Sabadell Asabys II. Also participating were the CDTI –the center for technological development of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities– and the Catalan Institute of Finance (ICF), the public financial entity of the Generalitat.

Allox is developing a technological platform "to direct drugs to proteins that cause diseases", explains the co-founder and CEO of the company, Júlia Domingo. The platform must allow knowing which proteins the medicine should be directed to and finding the mechanisms to attack only the proteins that cause the disease.

Although for the moment the development is aimed at oncological, immune system, and inflammatory diseases, the platform can grow and could be used for all types of diseases. "By combining large-scale functional data with predictive artificial intelligence, we aspire to open a much broader range of complex pharmacological targets and accelerate the discovery of truly differentiated small molecule treatments", explains Júlia Domingo.

Allox, which has its headquarters at the Barcelona Science Park, where it occupies a 100 square meter laboratory (it has recently doubled the surface area), has a staff of fifteen people that combines biomedicine profiles with technological profiles.

New president

To bolster growth, the company has hired a new chairman, Morten Graugaard, with extensive experience in the sector. With more than twenty years dedicated to venture capital in life sciences, R&D, business development, and mergers and acquisitions, Graugaard is Chief Business Officer of Orbis Medicines, an oral biologic drug company. He was also a partner and head of investments at Novo Holdings, and as head of corporate development at Lundbeck, he led several operations in the sector, such as the purchase of Chelsea Therapeutics for more than 658 million dollars or the 1.8 billion dollar global alliance with Otsuka Pharmaceutical. Over the last decade, he has held positions as chairman, board member, and advisor to several companies, including Syndesi Therapeutics, which AbbVie acquired for 1 billion dollars in 2022.

For Clara Campàs, co-founder and managing partner of Asabys, the funding raised by Allox and the appointment of the new chairman will strengthen Allox's execution capacity and its corporate governance as it advances in the development of its platform to translate it into a therapeutic portfolio.