DISCO dances out of the shadows with €20m for ‘surfaceome’

Germany has a new biotech, DISCO Pharmaceuticals, which has announced its presence with €20 million (around $22 million) in seed financing that will be used to advance its cancer target-hunting platform.

The company has developed a surface proteomics platform that can be used to identify new targets on the surface of cancer cells, at scale, to generate a map of the ‘surfaceome’. The targets could be used to develop new drugs like antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), bispecific antibodies, and T-cell engagers.

The financing round was led by Sofinnova Partners, with buy-in from AbbVie Ventures, Panakes Partners, and M Ventures.

According to DISCO, at the moment fewer than 30 molecular targets form the basis of all approved antibody-based cancer therapies, meaning that there is a huge, untapped well of potential targets that might result in novel medicines.

The company claims that its platform can identify individual proteins, as well as protein ‘communities’, the molecules that exist in close proximity to known protein targets and have the potential to be targeted in their own right.

The Cologne-based biotech has already completed the first-ever map of the surfaceome of a cancer type, namely small cell lung cancer (SCLC), and is now working on the development of antibody-based treatments for SCLC, a tumour type which has historically been difficult to treat. It is also working on a map for microsatellite-stable (MSS) colorectal cancer (CRC), another tumour type with high unmet medical need

DISCO, which spun out of Swiss university ETH Zurich, is led by Professor Roman Thomas, a scientist at the Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC), who said: “Our surfaceome discovery technology is truly disruptive and will transform oncology treatment options and ultimately improve outcomes for patients.”

He added that the SCLC surfaceome map was completed “within months” and has validated the company’s technology platform and approach.

Prof Thomas is a co-founder of the biotech, along with chief operating officer Dr Johannes Heuckmann, a seasoned biotech executive who previously worked for companies including PearlRiver Bio and NEO New Oncology, as well as ETH Zurich’s Professor Bernd Wollscheid and Professor Julien Sage of Stanford University in the US.

Another biopharma veteran, Dieter Weinand, has been named as DISCO’s chairman. Weinand was previously the CEO of Bayer Pharma and has held leadership positions at Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Sanofi.

“Expanding the possible target space in oncology has been a bottleneck in the industry for decades,” commented Weinand.

“I am thrilled to be working with the truly exceptional people at DISCO, as I firmly believe that they will be able to overcome this hurdle by using their disruptive surfaceome discovery engine.”