Research & development

Sprint Bioscience is a pharmaceutical company focused on developing innovative drug candidates that can contribute to new treatments for cancer. The great need for new therapies for difficult-to-treat cancers brings great commercial potential. Using a fragment-based drug discovery approach, we develop drug programmes in a time- and resource-efficient manner that are licensed to global pharmaceutical companies during the preclinical phase. Sprint Bioscience has successfully entered into several global licence agreements with pharmaceutical companies. These companies allocate resources and further develop the programmes into finished drugs that can be brought to market and help patients who are in great need of new treatment options.

In the videos below, you can watch Sprint Biosciences' Chief Scientific Officer Martin Andersson give an insight into how we identify new starting points for our programmes, and Chief Business Officer Anne-Marie Wenthzel explain more about the business model and the process of finding the right partner for each programme.

When pre-clinical drug programmes are licensed to a customer, the licensing agreements typically include an up-front payment when the contract is signed, milestone payments when the programme achieves certain pre-defined milestones and royalties on the sale of the finished pharmaceutical product. The fact that the financing of the programme is taken over by the licensee when the contract is signed reduces our capital requirements. Sprint Bioscience often has a continued involvement in the preclinical development of the programme, a collaboration with the licensee that generates revenues in addition to the milestone payments included in the agreement.

Licensing in the preclinical phase allows us to focus on building expertise in preclinical drug development. Once a programme has been licensed out and the work taken over by the licensee, new programmes can be started on an existing platform, allowing us to spread risk across a portfolio of different programmes rather than relying on a few.

Sprint Bioscience aims to sign on average one licence agreement per year. To achieve this, new potential target proteins are continuously evaluated. The choice of focus area for new programmes is based on our in-house expertise in tumour metabolism and related areas, such as immuno-oncology and factors affecting the tumour microenvironment. As Sprint Bioscience's business model is to license out programmes prior to clinical trials, target proteins are selected that are covered by good scientific research with few competing drug programmes.

Sprint Bioscience has been focused on oncology and tumour metabolism from the start and today the focus is on the interface between metabolism/immuno-oncology/tumour microenvironment.

New programmes are evaluated according to an established model. Programmes that meet the set criteria move to the next stage. Here, we perform the initial experiments to determine whether molecules with good drug properties can be produced.

Programmes that do not meet the requirements of medical relevance, technical feasibility or market potential are discontinued at an early stage without significant resources being expended. This means that we minimise the risk of investing significant resources in non-functioning programmes.

Our process allows us to produce molecules in a couple of months, which is significantly faster than traditional drug development. The method is resource efficient, allowing us to manage several parallel programmes. By streamlining the process from idea to drug candidate, we build value in drug development. 

One of the reasons we can be so efficient is that our process is based on what is called fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD). The FBDD approach is effective in identifying and developing small molecule drugs. By starting with a small molecule, a fragment, that binds weakly to the target protein, information can be gathered on how the fragment binds to the protein. This information can then be used to create larger molecules with a modified chemical structure and stronger binding profile to the target protein.      

One advantage of FBDD over other methods is that several target proteins can be investigated in parallel, as the initial analyses do not need to be specifically adapted for each target protein. Another advantage is that the drug molecules can be customised, which gives control over patentability from the start. 

Sprint Bioscience is engaged in drug development from idea to drug candidate ready to enter clinical trials. Our programmes are licensed by pharmaceutical companies who take them through the clinic and to market.

Through collaborations with academia, we can access advanced disease models that are unique and give us the best tools to test our drug candidates and find the right indications for each project.

Sprint Bioscience owns all results and rights to our research findings.

Are you interested in working with Sprint Bioscience? Welcome to contact us - we are always open to suggestions that can contribute to the development of our projects.