GSK-Backed Sitryx Launches With Six Immunometabolism Eggs In Its Basket

Chemical assets from GlaxoSmithKline PLC and target biology insights from high-profile academic founders form the basis for new company Sitryx, which has been launched with $30m in series A funding. Focused on developing disease-modifying treatments for autoimmune/inflammatory conditions and cancer, it is working on six early-stage projects to target immunometabolic pathways with small-molecule candidates. The company sprang out of the Immunology Network set up at GSK by Paul Peter Tak, who last month left the company after seven years and who is a co-founder of Sitryx.

"We have set ourselves up to be leaders in the field of immunometabolism," explained CEO Neil Weir, who joined the company as its first employee in April 2018. He was previously SVP Discovery at UCB Pharma. The company's assets include the tangible assets from GSK and "biological insights into pathways and as yet unpublished data from the founders' labs around the connectivity of targets to human disease," Weir told Scrip