Malin Makes Significant Commitment to Artizan Biosciences, Inc.
• Artizan focuses on creating therapies that target the microbiome
• Possible disease applications include a wide range of autoimmune and metabolic diseases such as obesity and certain diseases of the liver
• Lead programme is aimed at inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)
• Scientific and clinical foundation emanates from Prof. Richard Flavell’s and Prof. Noah Palm’s laboratories at Yale University
Dublin-Ireland, 6 February 2017: Malin Corporation plc. (“Malin”), an Irish based and globally operating life sciences company, today announced that it has acquired a 32% shareholding of Artizan Biosciences, Inc. (“Artizan”). Malin invested in a founding equity round alongside Hatteras Venture Partners, a venture capital firm with which Malin has a strategic partnership.
Artizan is a newly created biotechnology company headquartered in Durham, NC, with labs in New Haven, CT, that was founded to address diseases involving the human intestinal microbiota. This is an area of rapidly emerging, leading human health life science and, with additional progress, offers a broad possibility of potential therapeutic applications.
Artizan was spun out of Yale University and established as a standalone business in 2016. Highly innovative and far reaching research from Prof. Richard Flavell’s, PhD, FRS, laboratory at Yale has been the basis for the establishment of this undertaking. In sum, the research to date has demonstrated that the specific composition of the intestinal microbiota varies substantially between individuals. This observation, in turn, creates a pathway to key determinants of individualised susceptibility to a broad array of diseases.
In collaboration with Prof. Noah Palm, PhD, at Yale, Artizan has developed a capability of distinguishing certain pathogenic bacteria from the remainder of the intestinal microbiota. The ability to target these specific bacteria could lead to treatment options for any number of digestive disorders as well as other diseases including obesity, autoimmune disease and a wide variety of skin, lung and central nervous system (CNS) diseases.
Artizan’s Scientific Founders include Prof. Richard Flavell, Noah Palm, PhD, and Marcel de Zoete, PhD, from Yale University. Artizan is led by CEO, Mr. James Rosen. Mr. Rosen brings over 25 years’ experience in the healthcare industry including a dozen years in venture capital at Intersouth Partners and most recently he led the venture capital investment practice for The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Adrian Howd, PhD, Chief Investment Officer of Malin, said: “Artizan’s strong foundational science underpins a platform that has potential therapeutic applicability across a number of diseases. Artizan’s proposed approach is disruptive to current treatment and would offer new and novel therapeutic options for patients suffering from a broad array of inflammatory disorders.”
Prof. Richard Flavell, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology at Yale University School of Medicine, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the Founders of Artizan, added: “Our goal to build Artizan into a sustainable, highly innovative and potentially disruptive biotechnology company that, with tangible clinical progress, will offer new therapeutic options for patients suffering from a wide variety of diseases. We intend to be a leader in the microbiota-driven inflammatory diseases space, which is both broad and far reaching.”
