Solute Guard Therapeutics (SGTx) is an early-stage biopharma company building on research from the groups of Prof. Claudio Mauro at the University of Birmingham and Prof. Michele Bombardieri at Queen Mary University of London.
The company was initially co-founded with NG Bio, a UK-based seed venture capital firm focused on immunology, and subsequently received funding and support from BaseLaunch. More recently, Ampleia, a France-based venture builder focused on rare diseases, joined the consortium, bringing additional expertise and support to the company’s development. The leadership team includes Dr Paul Jenkins (CEO), Dr Neil Gozzard (VP Translational Biology), Dr Tim Carlton (Antibody Development) and Dr Marion Pilorge (Head Operations), alongside the academic founders Prof. Claudio Mauro (CSO) and Prof. Michele Bombardieri (Head of the Scientific Advisory Board).
Building on more than a decade of research into how the immune microenvironment drives chronic inflammation, SGTx’s scientific foundation is supported by publications in leading journals, including Nature Metabolism and Cell Metabolism.
The team has shown that lactate acts as a bioactive metabolite capable of modulating inflammatory responses in T and B cells. It identified a lactate transporter that is highly expressed in diseased tissues and plays a pivotal role in driving pro-inflammatory effects. Inhibiting this transporter reprogrammes the immunometabolism of activated T and B cells within inflamed tissues, inducing broad anti-inflammatory and pro-resolution effects across multiple disease models and patient-derived cells. Importantly, SGTx has also demonstrated the relevance of the target to the formation and function of Ectopic Lymphoid Structures (ELS), which drive inflammatory responses across a wide range of diseases.
SGTx is now discovering and evaluating therapeutic candidates against this novel target, with the goal of developing a new approach to resolving chronic inflammatory diseases.
We are very pleased to announce Solute Guard Therapeutics and welcome the company to our portfolio.
