Amphista – a life sciences spin out from the University of Dundee

Amphista is a spinout from the lab of Professor Alessio Ciulli at the University’s School of Life Sciences and is widely touted as a ‘futurecorn’, a high-growth company with the potential to achieve a valuation exceeding £1 billion. 

In 2022, Amphista announced strategic collaborations, potentially worth over $2 billion, with global biopharmaceutical companies Merck Kga. and Bristol Myers Squibb to leverage the company’s targeted protein degradation (TPD) technology and generate therapeutics in multiple disease areas. The Dementia Discovery Fund has also invested in Amphista, via SV Health Investors, to advance TPD approaches against dementia drug targets.   

Targeted protein degradation is a field of chemical biology that is revolutionising drug discovery. It exploits the body’s own cellular waste disposal system to destroy disease-causing proteins, rather than inhibiting their function.

This new approach provides hope of treating diseases previously thought to be undruggable and is applicable to diverse areas including oncology, dermatology, immunology, respiratory and central nervous system diseases. Degrading rather than inhibiting a target protein offers several advantages such as better drug response at lower doses as well as reduced side effects and disease resistance. 

Professor Alessio Ciulli is widely recognised as one of the global pioneers in the field of targeted protein degradation. In 2017, Amphista spun out of the world-leading research taking place in his lab at the University of Dundee, where he is now Director of the Centre for Targeted Protein Degradation. 

Amphista’s technology is specifically designed to develop drug candidates based on mechanistic insights and novel chemistry approaches. These enable the company to create protein-degrading therapeutics with superior levels of efficacy and broad therapeutic applicability.  

The company is supported by leading life science investors including Forbion, Gilde Healthcare, Novartis Venture Fund, Advent Life Sciences, BioMotiv and Eli Lilly & Company.