Biotech startup Tensegrity Pharma announced on the 31st raising 150 million yen in seed funding. This round saw participation from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, bringing their cumulative seed round funding to 650 million yen, including 500 million yen from Newton Bio Capital in November 2024.
Founded in March 2023, the company operates a business model of evaluating and recovering drug candidates strategically discontinued from development, using their unique drug discovery perspective to maximize value through global exploratory clinical development trials.
TSP-101, currently under development, is a preclinical development product inherited from Astellas Pharma, targeted for development as a cachexia treatment. Cachexia is a syndrome characterized by weight loss associated with chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and infections. Its pathology is not fully understood, and there are no unified treatment methods or approved therapeutic drugs.
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Cancer-related cachexia, in particular, is a multifactorial disease difficult to recover from with normal nutritional support, primarily characterized by sustained skeletal muscle loss. According to the company, this complication appears in about 80% of cancer patients, causing weight loss and loss of appetite, leading to problems such as reduced chemotherapy effectiveness, increased side effects, and treatment interruption.
TSP-101 is expected to have anti-cachexia effects by blocking signals from specific factors overexpressed in various cancers with high cachexia incidence and suppressing cancer-derived systemic inflammatory responses, along with anti-cancer effects through improvement of the cancer microenvironment. The company aims to use the newly raised funds to rapidly transition TSP-101 to clinical Phase 1/2 and quickly obtain clinical Proof of Concept (POC).
SOURCE: TheBridge
