NEWS
Kizoo portfolio company Underdog awarded ‘Innovation Passport’ by UK Regulators
- 09/08/2021
Mountain View, CA, U.S., September 08, 2021 – Underdog Pharmaceuticals, a key investment of Michael Greve’s rejuvenation biotech VC Kizoo is one of the first companies to be awarded the Innovation Passport under the United Kingdom’s Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway (ILAP). This will enable faster patient access to its groundbreaking treatment for the prevention of heart attacks and stroke.
ILAP, introduced by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in January, is designed to accelerate the development of and access to promising medicines of significant potential public health benefit. The ILAP program also provides the potential for significant downstream regulatory advantages, including rolling clinical reviews, accelerated assessment, and supervised early reimbursed use under adaptive authorization.
Accounting for up to 40% of deaths in Europe and the United States with annual treatment costs of over £29 billion in the UK alone, cardiovascular disease is by far the world’s most life-threatening condition, and its primary cause is atherosclerosis. Underdog is developing engineered cyclodextrins for the treatment of atherosclerosis by removing arterial plaque and clearing the non-degradable cholesterol that accumulates within cells in the arterial walls.
„I believe the MHRA is sending a powerful message by reviewing and admitting preclinical stage programs like ours into ILAP,“ noted Mike Kope, Underdog Co-CEO „The advice and consultation we’ll receive will be invaluable to the success of the program and our long-term goal to deliver a simple and affordable preventive therapy for the world. The ILAP program will allow us to advance to a world without heart attacks and stroke a lot faster“.
About Underdog
Underdog Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is pursuing a mission to treat the underlying causes of age-related disease. The company develops simple and direct interventions targeting oxidized cholesterol using rationally designed molecules, to provide the first true disease-modifying treatments for common age-related conditions such as atherosclerosis, heart attack, and stroke. Its products are based on novel derivatives of a well-known, safe compound and a new way of looking at cardiovascular disease. For more information, please visit www.underdogpharma.com.
About KIZOO
Kizoo provides seed and follow-on financing with a focus on rejuvenation biotech. Having been entrepreneurs, VC, and mentors in both high-growth tech and biotech companies ourselves for many years with multiple exits and massive value created for the founders, Kizoo now brings this experience to the emerging field of rejuvenation biotech. We see it as a young industry that will eventually outgrow today’s largest technology markets.
As part of Michael Greve’s Forever Healthy Group, Kizoo directly supports the creation of startups turning research on the root causes of aging into therapies and services for human application. Investments include Cellvie, Underdog, Revel Pharmaceuticals, Elastrin Therapeutics, and others.
Forever Healthy’s other initiatives include the evaluation of new rejuvenation therapies, evidenced-based curation of the world’s cutting-edge medical knowledge, funding research projects on the root causes of aging, and hosting the annual Undoing Aging Conference.
For more information, please visit: www.kizoo.com and www.forever-healthy.org