Promatix Biosciences Ltd, an emerging UK-based biotechnology company developing innovative new classes of cancer therapies using cis-bispecific antibodies, announced that it has been awarded a grant under the Innovate UK Biomedical Catalyst 2025: Industry-led R&D small projects competition. The funding will support continued development of the Company’s lead program, PBS293-exatecan, a first-in-class EGFR × EphA2 cis-bispecific ADC for the treatment of CRC and other solid tumors.

The award will fund the scale-up and conjugation of PBS293 with an exatecan payload, additional preclinical proof-of-concept studies in both CDX and PDX models of CRC, and IND-enabling regulatory safety studies to support the nomination of PBS293-exatecan as a development candidate. In parallel, Promatix will apply its discovery platform to evaluate oesophageal cancer and NSCLC as additional indications. The work will be conducted with established UK-based contract research organizations, including Abzena, Crown Bioscience and Labcorp UK.

PBS293 targets EGFR and EphA2, two antigens co-expressed on colorectal tumor cells. While EGFR is a clinically validated target in CRC, the benefit of EGFR-targeted antibodies such as cetuximab is limited to a subset of patients and constrained by toxicity arising from EGFR expression in healthy tissue. Building on previously reported preclinical data, Promatix has advanced an exatecan-based conjugate, selected for its established clinical safety profile and efficacy. In preclinical studies, PBS293-exatecan has demonstrated potent killing of colorectal cancer cell lines while substantially sparing normal human keratinocytes and endothelial cells — consistent with the tumor-selective “AND-gate” design intended to widen the therapeutic window.

“This award from Innovate UK enables us to generate the additional preclinical data needed to move PBS293-exatecan towards development candidate nomination,” said Dr. Roy Pettipher, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of Promatix. “By scaling up our lead conjugate and testing it in both cell-line and patient-derived models, alongside the regulatory safety studies expected for an ADC, we plan to assemble the industry-standard data package that partners and investors are looking for. PBS293-exatecan combines potent tumor-cell killing with sparing of normal skin and vascular cells in our preclinical work, reflecting the tumor selectivity that is central to our cis-bispecific approach.”

“Non-dilutive funding of this kind is strong external validation of both our lead program and the proteomics-driven discovery platform behind it,” said Dr. Michael Hunter, CEO and Co-Founder of Promatix. “It will enable us to advance PBS293-exatecan in colorectal cancer while extending the same logic-gated approach to further solid tumors, including oesophageal and non-small cell lung cancer. Generating robust efficacy and safety data in this program is a key inflection point that we expect to underpin a future pharma partnership and to support our planned Series A financing, enabling us to build a broader pipeline of tumor-selective bispecific ADCs from a UK base.”

The program reinforces Promatix’s integrated platform, which combines large-scale tumor surface proteomics with logic-gated computational modeling to identify complementary antigen pairs and expand the universe of tumor-selective targets available for next-generation ADCs. EGFR × EphA2 was identified and prioritized through this platform, and success in the funded program is intended to provide further validation of the approach across additional cancer indications.

Promatix is developing a pipeline of novel bispecific ADCs in colorectal cancer and additional solid tumor indications.

For more information, visit www.pro-matix.com.