*Press release
Iteria Biopharma is a new Galician biotech focused on the discovery of precision drugs for cancer treatment.
Based in Touro (A Coruña, Spain), Iteria will develop a first program in prostate cancer initiated by GalChimia.
Santiago de Compostela 03/12/2024
Iteria Biopharma joins the biotechnology ecosystem of Galicia (Spain) from the Business Park of Touro in A Coruña, where it plans to grow in capital and staff in 2025. The company begins its journey with the preclinical development of a candidate for the treatment of prostate cancer resistant to androgen deprivation therapy, taking over from the advances achieved by GalChimia in the project MAOPROST.
The capital of Iteria Biopharma is made up of GalChimia, the Spanish CRO led by Carme Pampín and Jacobo Cruces specialized in chemistry services for the pharmaceutical industry; Julio Castro, CEO and founder of the biotech Palobiofarma with sites in Navarra and Barcelona; and Ramon Bosser, who also assumes the position of CEO in the new company, providing more than 28 years of experience in drug development programs in pharma and biotech environments.
The promoters are renewing their collaboration after the success of their previous initiative, Origo Biopharma, another biotech company specialising in the discovery of organ-restricted drugs for the treatment of intestinal and pulmonary fibrosis. After reaching clinical phases with its candidate for fibrostenosis associated with Crohn’s disease and starting a second preclinical programme for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis under the leadership of Ramon Bosser as CEO, Origo was acquired in 2021 by the Belgian company Agomab Therapeutics, which has continued with the clinical development of both programs initiated by Origo Biopharma.
“Just as the name ORIGO referred to the origin of a collaboration with the challenge of advancing a first drug discovery programme, ITERIA symbolises our intention to strengthen this cooperation model and repeat the experience by promoting a new project. What we have learned previously now allows us to start with a consolidated core and move forward with great agility in this highly competitive sector”, explains Carme Pampín.
Iteria Biopharma’s CEO, Ramon Bosser, adds that “it is a privilege to collaborate again with GalChimia and Julio Castro on this exciting project, both for the high professionalism and human quality of the partners and the GalChimia team involved, and for the fact that by joining forces we hope to be able to provide solutions to patients with different types of cancer that remain unresolved to date”.
Iteria Biopharma was created to take on the significant progress made by GalChimia in the project MAOPROST, an initiative with financial support of the Public Administration through the 2021 Public-Private Collaboration program of the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities and the State Research Agency (AEI), whose main goal was the discovery and development of therapeutic products to fight castration-resistant prostate cancer.
Additionally, the company has already started to develop programs in other types of cancer with high unmet medical need. “We intend to apply the latest advances in the design of new compounds to known therapeutic targets that have already been validated pharmacologically but that are extremely complicated to modulate using conventional drug discovery methods”, says Julio Castro, one of the founders of Iteria.
The three partners will provide enough capital to launch the preclinical development of the first program this year, and will aim to raise public and private capital during 2025 to ensure the efficient progress of all their projects.
More information at www.iteriabiopharma.com
From left to right: Jesús Álvarez (Project Manager), Ramon Bosser (Cofounder and CEO), Carme Pampín (Cofounder), and Raúl Fernández (Head of CMC).
