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September 14, 2020 | Tom Ballard

UTRF licensee raises $25 million to advance work to improve the lives of patients with systemic amyloidosis

Attralus, a South San Francisco-based biopharmaceutical company with technology licensed from the University of Tennessee (UT) Research Foundation, has secured $25 million in investment financing to work on transformative medicines to improve the lives of patients with systemic amyloidosis. The financing was led by venBio Partners in San Francisco and will allow Attralus to further validate its pan-amyloid imaging agent and advance two therapeutic candidates into clinical development.

According to this news release from the company, Attralus was founded in 2019 with funding from venBio Partners and is focused on illuminating the systemic nature of amyloidosis and creating transformative medicines to improve the lives of patients. The company’s proprietary peptide-based pan-amyloid targeting agents have the potential to diagnose and treat all forms and stages of systemic amyloidosis.

Jonathan Wall, Professor of Medicine at the UT Graduate School of Medicine and Attralus’ Interim Chief Scientific Officer, leads UT’s amyloidosis and cancer theranostics program. He and his research group have spent more than two decades investigating the disorder. In a two-part teknovation.biz series from 2014 (Part 1 and Part 2), Wall discussed that work and a company that the researchers had founded. That company folded, but the work lived on.

UT also issued a news release on the milestone (click here to read it).

 


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