Press Releases

26 September 2013

Karus Therapeutics shortlisted for key industry award

Karus Therapeutics, a leader in the development of innovative medicines for the treatment of inflammatory disease and cancer, is shortlisted for the ‘Best Biotech Fundraiser’ at this year’s OBN Awards. The awards will be held on the 1st October 2013 at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and will bring together the UK's emerging life sciences companies, corporate partners and investors to celebrate the achievements within the bioscience sector over the last year. To read more about the OBN Awards, please follow the link here.

21 August 2013

Karus Therapeutics secures prominent role in epigenetics debate at SciBX Summit 2013

Karus Therapeutics, a leader in the development of innovative medicines for the treatment of inflammatory disease and cancer, today announced its engagement with the “Epigenetics’ Second Wind” debate at the SciBX Summit on Innovation in Drug Discovery and Development to be held in Boston, USA, on 29-30 October.

19 April 2013

Karus Therapeutics presenting at BIO, BioTrinity, Anglo-Nordic Biotech and Next-Gen Kinase Inhibitors

Karus Therapeutics, a leader in the development of innovative medicines for the treatment of inflammatory disease and cancer, has announced that it will be making presentations at a number of key trade conferences including:

09 April 2013

Karus Therapeutics appoints Scientific Advisory Board and announces move to new Oxford facilities

Karus Therapeutics, a leader in the development of innovative medicines for the treatment of inflammatory disease and cancer, today announced the appointment of its scientific advisory board (SAB), which brings together world-leading expertise in target biology and drug research and development. The appointment of Karus’s SAB reflects the Company’s recent expansion and move to fully-integrated research and office facilities near Oxford.

17 December 2012

Collaboration with Babraham Institute to explore PI3 kinase inhibitors in the treatment of inflammatory diseases

Karus Therapeutics Announces Collaboration with Babraham Institute to Explore PI3 Kinase Inhibitors in the Treatment of Inflammatory Diseases

06 September 2012

Karus Therapeutics secures Series B financing from a syndicate of leading VC investors

Karus Therapeutics, a leader in the development of innovative medicines for the treatment of inflammatory disease and cancer, announces the closing of its Series B investment, which includes a first tranche of $7.6 million.

04 May 2010

Karus Therapeutics secures further financing

Innovative pharmaceutical company Karus Therapeutics Ltd has today announced the closing of a £0.7 million financing. Investors include IP Venture Fund, Esperante, Drummond Paris and a number of existing and new Business Angels. The investment will be used to advance the development of Karus’s KAR2581 HDAC inhibitor and first‐in‐class drugs that selectively and potently target HDAC‐6 (KAR3000) and PI3‐Kinase p110β/p110δ (KAR4000). The company is focused on the development of these drugs to treat inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), psoriasis and organ transplant rejection. With this investment, Karus will confirm the clinical candidates in it’s KAR2581, 3000 & 4000 programs and substantiate their potential as breakthrough treatments for chronic inflammatory diseases.

18 February 2010

Karus develops new family of HDAC-6 selective inhibitors

Karus Therapeutics Ltd, a company engaged in the discovery and development of molecular-targeted drugs to treat inflammation and cancer, announced today it had extended its HDAC drug discovery programme to include small molecules that selectively inhibit HDAC-6, a target of emerging importance in the treatment of immune-inflammatory disorders.

23 September 2009

Karus Therapeutics and Queen Mary, University of London announce PI3 kinase collaboration

Karus Therapeutics Ltd, a company developing small molecule drugs to treat cancer and inflammation, has today announced that it has signed an agreement to collaborate with Professor Bart Vanhaesebroeck, at Queen Mary, University of London. Prof. Vanhaesebroeck is Centre Lead of the RAE 4-star rated Cell Signalling Laboratory. As part of the collaboration, Karus and Professor Vanhaesebroeck will be working to develop new small molecule inhibitors of selected isoforms of phosphoinositide 3-kinases (PI3K).

17 August 2009

Karus CSO to present at three industry conferences

Innovative pharmaceutical company Karus Therapeutics Ltd has today announced that the company’s CSO, Dr Stephen Shuttleworth, will be making presentations at three key conferences in the coming weeks.

01 June 2009

Organ transplant rejection collaboration with University Hospital Birmingham

Innovative pharmaceutical company Karus Therapeutics has today announced a collaborative research program with the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Renal Transplant Unit under the supervision of Lead Surgeon, Andrew Ready, Consultant Surgeon, Nicholas Inston, and Stephen Shuttleworth, CSO of Karus. The research program is designed to investigate the in vitro mechanisms-of-action of histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDIs) in specific leukocyte subsets, allogenic responses and in vivo models of transplant rejection.

04 May 2009

KTP award with King's College

Innovative pharmaceutical company Karus Therapeutics Ltd has today announced the successful receipt of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) award with King’s College London. The award will be used to support a collaborative program at the internationally renowned St John’s Institute of Dermatology at Guy’s Hospital under the joint supervision of the Head of Clinical Immunodermatology, Dr Richard Groves, and Dr Stephen Shuttleworth, Chief Scientific Officer of Karus Therapeutics. The KTP award will provide three years research and development support to Karus’s dermatology program.

06 April 2009

Karus announces second closing of investment

Innovative pharmaceutical company Karus Therapeutics Ltd has today announced a second closing of its December 2008 investment, bringing the total amount raised to over £1 million and securing the company’s first US-based investor, New Hill Management LLC.

07 January 2009

Karus Therapeutics secures investment

Innovative pharmaceutical company Karus Therapeutics Ltd has today announced the closing of a £0.9 million investment. Investors include IP Venture Fund, Esperante, Drummond Paris and a number of Business Angels. The investment will be used to advance the development of new drugs to treat cancer and inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis and includes innovative medicines based on Karus’s HDAC inhibitor (HDI) platform.

20 October 2008

Karus CSO presents at major industry conference

Innovative pharmaceutical company Karus Therapeutics Ltd has today announced that the company’s Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Stephen Shuttleworth, will be making a presentation at CHI’s Second Annual HDAC Inhibitors meeting in Boston, MA. This meeting is part of the Discovery on Target conference and brings together research and development teams from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that are active in the field of HDAC inhibitors.

02 April 2008

Ann Hacker joins Karus board

Innovative pharmaceutical company Karus Therapeutics Ltd has today announced that Ann Hacker has joined the company’s board as an independent non-executive director. Ann brings substantial experience of senior management and corporate governance gained in major pharmaceutical and VC-backed biotechnology companies, which will support Karus’s continued growth and success.

01 January 2008

Karus appoints Stephen Shuttleworth as Chief Scientific Officer

Innovative pharmaceutical company Karus Therapeutics Ltd has today announced the appointment of Dr Stephen J Shuttleworth FRSC to the position of Chief Scientific Officer. Dr Shuttleworth brings substantial R&D management experience gained from major life-science companies on both sides of the Atlantic and will play a key part in Karus’s ongoing success.

23 October 2007

Karus Scientist presents at key industry conferences

Innovative pharmaceutical company Karus Therapeutics make presentations at two key industry conferences: the CHI „Discovery on Target‟ conference (Boston, MA) and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) conference (San Francisco, CA). In both presentations Professor Graham Packham, one of Karus’s founders, highlighted the progress made with Karus’s synthetic depsipeptide analogues and, in particular, presented in vivo data showing the dramatic improvements that Karus has recently made to the potency, safety and drug-like properties of these compounds.

01 October 2007

Karus signs co-development agreement with EOS

Innovative pharmaceutical company Karus Therapeutics Ltd has entered a co-development agreement with EOS SpA (Milan, Italy) to discover and develop new anti-cancer drugs based on Karus’s unique therapeutics platform. As part of the collaboration, Karus and EOS aim to develop a new drug through human Phase IIA cancer trials before securing a development and marketing partner.

01 July 2007

Karus raises £0.82 million investment

Innovative pharmaceutical company Karus Therapeutics Ltd has today announced the closing of a £0.82 million investment, led by the company’s Chairman, Drummond Paris. Investors also included a consortium of high net worth individuals and reference Angels and the IP Venture Fund. The investment will be used to further develop drugs to treat cancer and inflammatory diseases based on Karus’s optimized HDAC inhibitor platform (OS-HDI).

12 October 2006

Drummond Paris named as Chairman of Karus Therapeutics

Innovative biopharmaceutical company Karus Therapeutics has appointed Drummond Paris as Chairman. He is currently President of Kowa Research Europe Ltd and was formerly CEO of Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK.

02 May 2006

Karus Therapeutics appoints Simon Kerry as CEO

Karus Therapeutics, an emerging biotechnology company and University of Southampton spinout, focused on developing innovative therapeutics to treat cancer and heart disease, has announced the appointment of Simon Kerry as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

13 December 2005

Collaboration with Sareum Holdings

Karus Therapeutics is pleased to announce it has entered into a collaborative agreement with AIM-listed Sareum Holdings plc, a specialist structure-based drug discovery and services business. Sareum will provide computational chemistry expertise to support Karus's therapeutic discovery programmes based on inhibitors of histone deacetylase (HDAC). Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

21 July 2005

Cancer and heart disease drug discovery company is latest spin-out from Southampton University

A new spin-out company from the University of Southampton is aiming to make the treatment of cancer and heart disease more patient friendly.

A new paradigm in cancer treatment – combining the effectiveness of targeted therapy and immunotherapy