SIR Tom Hunter's West Coast Capital has made a “multi-million-pound” investment in Ellipses Pharma, the cancer drugs venture founded by biotech entrepreneur Sir Christopher Evans.
The high-profile Scottish businessman's family investment arm has joined Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, Redrow founder Steve Evans and the president of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed, in backing the company, which is currently understood to have three “very exciting” oncology drugs in clinical trials.
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Ellipses has invested $150 million into its clinical drugs pipeline and plans to invest a further $100m, $40m of which was raised recently.
Sir Tom said: “I’ve known Chris for over 25 years and invested with him over the years. This investment for us is very exciting – the quality of the team, world class use of expert knowledge and the intelligent disruption of financing the drug discovery… And then of course led by the force of nature that is professor Sir Chris Evans.”
London-based Ellipses Pharma is focused on accelerating the development of cancer treatments, using a cloud-based platform to crowdsource scientific and clinical insight from its key opinion leaders which allows them to provide responses anonymously.
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It announced in March that the number of oncology experts within its Scientific Affairs Group had increased to more than 200.
The experts, which are drawn from more than 100 institutions in Europe, the US, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East-North Africa, provide analysis and advice on the selection of promising potential cancer medicines.
The most recent recruits included a Nobel Prize Laureate and professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (USA); a pioneer in breast cancer therapy who is also a diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine & National Board of Medical Examiners; and an ovarian cancer expert and senior faculty member of the Leuven Cancer Institute (Belgium).
Sir Christopher said at the time: “We are delighted and very proud that so many eminent oncologists from around the world have enthusiastically embraced what we believe is the largest scientific affairs group in oncology and a unique model. From the outset, our goal has been to streamline.
“The cancer drug development process and our key opinion leaders are playing a vital role in helping us de-risk drug selection and advance high-quality assets quickly.”
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