Company history

PolyTherics was formed in 2002 with technology that originated at the London School of Pharmacy and Imperial College London. One of the three founding scientists, Dr Steve Brocchini is the Company’s Chief Scientific Officer and another, Antony Godwin, is its Director of Science & Technology. The initial seed funding was provided by the Bloomsbury Bioseed Fund and The Wellcome Trust’s Catalyst Biomedica.

In June 2007 the Company received a further investment of £2.3m from Imperial Innovations Group plc, Longbow Capital and the Regional Venture Capital Fund for London. In February 2010 Imperial Innovations Group plc, Longbow Capital and the Capital Fund made a follow-on investment of £3m.

“Recently, Brocchini and coworkers [34-37] introduced an elegant strategy in which disulfide bridges are first reduced, then reacted with methoxy PEGs bearing a bi-functional reacting agent at the chain end. Bis-alkylation of the resulting free thiols gave a three-carbon bridge to which PEG was covalently attached (Table 2).”

Source: Ryan et al. Advances in PEGylation of important biotech molecules: delivery aspects. Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery. 2008; 5(4): 371-383