About Amphista

Amphista Therapeutics is the leading Europe-based targeted protein degradation (TPD) company. Our scientific team, which includes leading academic and drug discovery pioneers from the TPD field, has developed several completely novel mechanisms to remove disease-causing proteins from within cells.

We have shown these novel mechanisms have potential to overcome many of the limitations seen with current TPD approaches, and to deliver transformational medicines to treat a wide range of disease.

Targeted Protein Degradation.

The targeted protein degradation (TPD) approach offers a greatly improved way of treating disease, and modulating drug targets, using synthetic small molecule degraders.

Our degraders are bifunctional, or two-headed, molecules. One end is designed to selectively bind to the specific, disease-causing proteins we want to degrade while the other end binds to proteins involved in cellular protein degradation so our molecules act as magnets to attract the desired proteins to be degraded. We call our protein degrading drugs, Amphistas.

Most drug molecules transiently inhibit a single function of a disease-causing protein but TPD degraders can remove the target proteins from within cells completely. This provides much more complete and durable inhibition of biological pathways leading to more effective control of disease processes.

Effectively retrain and redirect

Degraders generate their effects through hijacking the cellular waste disposal process active within all human cells, known as the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS). During normal disease progression, pathogenic proteins are removed from cells inefficiently or not at all, allowing them to continue to drive undesired cellular processes which ultimately lead to illness.

TPD drugs however, effectively retrain and redirect the cellular waste disposal processes to actively seek out these disease-causing proteins, leading to their rapid and complete removal from the body.

TPD approaches offer many advantages over other drug modalities

TPD Degraders function by bringing a disease-causing target protein and a UPS protein (frequently one of a family of E3 ubiquitin ligases proteins) into close proximity within cells allowing the target to be tagged with a marker, ubiquitin (Ub), which flags it to be subsequently destroyed by the cell’s waste recycling centre, the proteasome. Due to their unique mode of action, TPD approaches offer many advantages over other drug modalities including small molecule inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies or oligonucleotide-based RNAi approaches as summarised below.

Traditional Small Molecules
Antibodies
Oligos
Targetted Small Molecule Protein Degraders
Undruggable Targets
(scaffolding, multiple funct.)
Intracellular Targets
(enzymatic activity)
Elimination
of target protein
Systemic
exposure
Oral
Catalytic
Efficient

One powerful characteristic of protein degrading drugs is their ability to act as highly efficient catalysts to accelerate the desired degradation processes within cells. This means very low doses and concentrations of active drug can deliver potent biological effects efficiently. Few other drug treatment approaches share this catalytic mode of action, allowing TPD molecules including Amphista degraders to deliver therapeutic effects impossible with other approaches.

TPD drugs therefore offer many transformational opportunities to develop new medicines though some limitations are now beginning to appear which may slow their clinical progress. Amphista focuses on maximising these opportunities while directly addressing and overcoming the limitations using our next generation TPD approaches.

Led by experts

Click to find out more about the people behind Amphista Therapeutics.

Alessio Ciulli PhD

Founder and Director

Alessio is Chair of Chemical and Structural Biology at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee. Alessio and his team have made significant contributions to the TPD field, including solving the first crystal structure of a PROTAC ternary complex. Initially in collaboration with the Crews Lab, they pioneered the structure-guided design of drug-like ligands for the von Hippel-Lindau E3 ligase, jump-starting the PROTAC field as a new therapeutic modality.

Satish Jindal PhD

Chairman

Satish Jindal, PhD, is BioMotiv’s CEO. Most recently, Dr. Jindal served as CEO of Allied-Bristol Life Sciences (ABLS). Prior to ABLS, he served as a Vice President at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). Dr. Jindal has extensive experience in founding and building biotechnology companies. He also served as Vice President and Site Head at Schering-Plough Research Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Jindal completed his postdoctoral work at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He obtained a PhD in Biochemistry from Punjab University in India.

Nicola Thompson PhD

CEO

Nicki has over 25 years’ experience in pharmaceutical and biotechnology R&D in a variety of senior scientific and leadership roles. She was previously VP and Global Head of External Drug Discovery at F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd and prior to that, Senior Director, Business Development for GSK’s Centre of Excellence for External Drug Discovery (CEEDD). Nicki’s Biotech experience includes her role as Chair of the Board for Nanna Therapeutics Ltd, founding CEO of VirionHealth and Head of Drug Discovery at Syntaxin Ltd. She holds a PhD in Cell Biology from University College London.

Ian Churcher DPhil

CSO

Ian was one of the pioneers of the application of targeted protein degradation to drug discovery as Head of the Protein Degradation Discovery Performance Unit at GSK and through collaboration from 2012 with Prof Craig Crews (Yale). Ian built a team which demonstrated the viability of the VHL-recruiting PROTAC strategy and advanced a portfolio of projects from early proof of degradation through to clinic-enabling studies. During a successful career in pharma at Merck & GSK, Ian has contributed to and led a range of discovery projects across many therapy areas from target validation through to lead optimisation and clinical entry. When at GSK Ian also built and led the Fragment-based Drug Design chemistry team as well as other discovery technology areas including chemical biology and compound collection design and acquisition. More recently, Ian was SVP Drug Discovery at AI biotech BenevolentAI with responsibility for leadership and advancement of a portfolio of drug discovery projects across several therapeutic areas working closely with machine learning experts to develop novel AI-led methods for target identification and chemical optimisation.

Ian holds an MA and D.Phil. in Chemistry from the University of Oxford where we was also Visiting Professor in the Department of Chemistry

Wendy Nicholson PhD, MBA

COO

After gaining a BSc and PhD from the University of Edinburgh, she pursued a career in clinical research with GSK and ILEX Oncology Inc before moving into a Business Development role in the higher education sector. Gaining experience in IP management, contract negotiation and account management, she was the founder of EDYN Creative Ltd which provides services to universities and industry in commercialising early stage innovations.

Julia Jones FCA, BSc

Finance Director

After graduating from Loughborough University in 1997, Julia joined PricewaterhouseCoopers and qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2001. For the last twelve years, as the founder and Managing Director of Archangel Accounting Ltd, Julia has provided tailor-made support to many companies, including those with venture capital backing, privately owned businesses and charities. In addition to Amphista Therapeutics Limited, other significant biotech sector clients include Healx Limited, AMO Pharma Limited, Ventus Medical Limited, Exvastat Limited, Encipher Biotherapeutics Limited, Pheno Therapeutics Limited, Curve Therapeutics Limited and Circadian Therapeutics Limited.

Raj Parekh DPhil

Non-Executive Board Director

Raj joined Advent in 2005 bringing over 20 years of experience in biomedical research and as an entrepreneur and investor. After gaining an MA and DPhil from Oxford University, he pursued a successful academic career in molecular medicine before co-founding Oxford GlycoSciences (IPO on LSE and NASDAQ). Following its sale to UCB-Celltech, he became Chairman of Galapagos nv, a member of the Supervisory Board of the Novartis Venture Fund and a founding Director of Celldex Therapeutics. Since joining Advent, he has been involved with those portfolio Companies primarily engaged in the discovery of new medicines, including Avila, EUSA and Thiakis.

Why Amphista?

Amphista takes its name from the mythical two-headed serpent the Amphisbaena (also known as an Amphista). In ancient times, Amphisbaenae were said to possess many health-giving properties.

Career Opportunities

We seek exceptional and visionary scientists to join our team working on a cutting-edge therapeutic modality focused on bringing much needed new medicines to patients with life-changing diseases.

Amphista is searching for innovative, and highly motivated individuals who enjoy teamwork and are comfortable working in a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment.

If you feel that your skills and experience are aligned to the opportunities posted, please e-mail your CV directly to recruitment@amphista.com, including the position title in the subject line of your email.