Cancers such as advanced colorectal cancer are a major challenge for medicine. The start-up company EMUNO Therapeutics GmbH, a spin-off of the University Medical Center Freiburg and the University of Freiburg, is working on the fundamentals for the future clinical application of a new substance to support the immune system in the fight against cancer. The company has now been awarded an EIC Transition Grant of around 2.5 million euros for this project. The funding will enable the further development of EMT-224, which was developed by Prof. Dr. Olaf Groß and his research group at the Institute of Neuropathology at the University Medical Center Freiburg. Key support for drug screening stage of the project came from CIBSS.
"The award is a big step for our team," said Dr. Emilia Neuwirt, who is CEO of EMUNO Therapeutics, pharmacist, and former CIBSS doctoral researcher in Prof. Groß’s research group. "Our compound EMT-224 has shown in preclinical studies the potential to become an important building block in the fight against advanced colorectal cancer. We now need to carefully develop the initial results and work towards a possible clinical application".