King's College London

King's research and innovation staff welcomed portfolio biopharmaceutical company Apollo Therapeutics to celebrate their ongoing collaboration to develop new therapeutics for patients across multiple disease areas. 

 The drug discovery and development collaboration translates breakthroughs made by biomedical researcher's at King's into novel treatments to meet unmet medical needs and create important new medicines.

Welcoming Apollo, Dr Tom Foulkes, Director of Research Strategy & Performance at King's said: 

“I really want to emphasize from a university perspective how this is fundamentally different to a standard industry partnership model. Apollo are deeply embedded within King’s, and have a remarkably multi-faceted, flexible approach – combining deep expertise on therapeutic development with a willingness to invest early in the right projects. Their approach accelerates the translation of our research towards clinical benefit, and they have become trusted and valued partners. Apollo are operating under an overarching collaboration and confidentiality agreement that can help discussions happen in a very agile way, with at least 100 different conversations with academic groups on different ideas happening so far, all of which have added value. The speed with which projects are selected and accelerated is remarkable.”

Richard Mason, CEO of Apollo Therapeutics, said:

“Since 2021, our collaboration with King’s College London has enabled us to transform pioneering basic medical research into innovative drug discovery and development programs with the potential to address very big medical problems.

“With nine joint drug development programs currently underway, we are extremely proud of the progress we’ve made together, and we remain dedicated to advancing medical science, and ultimately clinical practice, together. We're thrilled to be working across the breath of King's world class research, from oncology to autoimmunity, small molecules to monoclonal antibodies, respiratory conditions to new approaches in transplantation, radioligand therapeutics to ADC approaches”

Dr Subhankar Mukhopadhyay (King's) and Dr Stephen Shaw (Apollo Therapeutics) presented a case study of their current collaboration working on a novel anti-cancer therapeutic. 

Praising the future potential of the collaboration, Prof Ajay Shah, Exec Dean FoLSM, said: 

"Our overall priority is to undertake research that is built on a strong foundation of fundamental science and ultimately benefits patients. We've a strong focus on how we personalize therapies and diagnostics, and I look forward to embedding that in the process of drug discovery, clinical studies and trials."

Discussing the benefits for fostering innovation and empowering researchers, Dr Nicolas Huber, Interim Director of King's Innovation Catalyst said: 

"Health is one of our biggest portfolios at King's, and our focus is to push research innovation and the translation of innovation to impact across the board. We have three very large sites of research, all embedded in a hospital setting, and through collaborations with partners like Apollo Therapeutics we can expand our horizon-scanning and communications internally across King's to uncover more early discoveries and bring more deals to the pipeline."

Apollo Therapeutics is a portfolio biopharmaceutical company based in the UK and US. Apollo translates breakthroughs in biology and basic medical research into innovative new medicines. Apollo also in-licenses or acquires clinical-stage programs where it has unique insights and synergies. Backed by leading specialist health care investors, Apollo has raised a total of over $450m since its inception. 

Programmes are chosen by the quality of scientific research and their potential to improve standards of care in commercial markets.

To talk to Apollo about a project contact Rachel Parker, Industry Research Partnerships Manager at King's Innovation Catalyst