ENYO Pharma Receives a 2.5M Euro Grant - Drug Discovery and Development

ENYO Pharma receives a 2.5 million euro grant from EU under the Horizon 2020 / SME Instrument Phase 2 program for its project MIMESIS.

ENYO Pharma, a biopharmaceutical company currently focused on developing treatments for viral infections, announced that it has received a grant of 2.5 million euros ($2.7 million) in response to its application to the highly competitive SME Instrument Phase 2 funding program (6% success rate).

The SME Instrument is part of Horizon 2020, the EU framework program dedicated to innovation and research managed by the European Commission. It belongs to the pillar “Industrial Leadership” of H2020 and aims to support high growth and highly innovative SMEs with global ambitions.

ENYO Pharma’s MIMESIS project applied for the June 2016 cut-off under the topic “Dedicated support to biotechnology SMEs closing the gap from lab to market.” MIMESIS has been selected by an independent jury of four experts recognized for their scientific and business expertise. The company will receive 2.5 million euros corresponding to the financing of 70% of the total project budget of 3.6 million euros ($3.9 million).

After a feasibility phase that generated ENYO’s internal drug development program on an autophagy target, MIMESIS will be expanded to an industrialized scale to accelerate the discovery of new therapeutic targets and innovative new chemical entities against infectious diseases and cancer.

“We are very honored to receive the recognition from the Horizon 2020 jury in what was a highly competitive process,” Dr. Eric Meldrum, ENYO Pharma’s chief scientific officer, commented. “MIMESIS represents a real paradigm shift in the development of new innovative drugs for pathologies where the medical need is immense. This financing will enable us to screen our library of original peptides and small molecules on hundreds of intracellular human targets previously untapped by the pharmaceutical industry.”

For the project, ENYO Pharma has designed a proprietary library of 10,000 small molecules to modulate host cell biology and also capable of disrupting protein: protein interactions (PPIs) between pathogens and the host. This library of developable chemical templates will be screened in phenotypic assays for inhibitors of the replication cycle of several viruses (Influenza, RSV, HRV, Zika) and a mycobacterium (TB).

As this library is designed to modulate host cell biology, it will also be screened for inducers of Immunogenic Cell Death (ICD) in tumors. With 3.6 million euros over 24 months, most promising chemistries will be the starting point for numerous hit to lead optimization programs funded within the EU grant. Those optimization efforts focused on novel intracellular targets will generate valuable Intellectual Property.

Upon completion of MIMESIS, ENYO Pharma will further optimize its best chemical series either internally or in collaboration with other pharmaceutical companies up to clinical proof of concept. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement n° 739086-MIMESIS.

(Source: Business Wire)