Suzy Dilly, CEO at the early stage cancer therapeutics business ValiRx (VAL) joined London South East to tell us about Cytolytix, the 60% owned subsidiary created to deal with an exciting new breast cancer treatment called CLX001.
"When we said the newly created Cytolitix has signed a an IP licence agreement with highly respected King's College London and aims to take CLX001 through to the clinical trials stage. CLX001 is a molecule buster designed to destroy cancer cells and solid tumours."
Suzy described it as 'absolutely amazing science' on the night, and said the team are thrilled with it.
"When we said we wanted to refocus on preclinical this is exactly what we set out to do".
ValiRx raised 2.5M in the summer and said that a typical programme such as CLX001 will typically take two to three years to get to clinical trials - but it is can be completely variable and things can either be speeded up or slowed down on the basis of what happens.
"Our next step is to plan for the clinical trial even though ValiRx isn't going to run it ..."
"A typical programme can cost anything between half a million and two million pounds to complete. We will be applying for grants for example to support this early stage innovation and we expect there will be a lot of variables."
Suzy went on to reiterate her support for TheoremRx as the right partners for the 201 licence.
"They have the right expertise in the science, the commercial angles and indeed how to raise the finance to take 201 forwards. It's disappointing the timing hasn't worked in our favour on this, it would have been nice to have had this wrapped up a year ago to be quite frank, but they are still the right partners."