Promakhos Therapeutics

A therapeutics platform for curing inflammatory disorders

Y CombinatorSummer 2021ActiveHealthcareTherapeuticsTherapeutics

What they do

Problem

Chronic inflammatory disorders like Crohn’s disease lack curative treatments that safely restore immune balance and promote healing.

Solution

The company develops a therapeutics platform based on bacterial molecules that activate innate immune pathways to control inflammation and repair tissue.

Who it's for

Patients with inflammatory autoimmune diseases treated through gastroenterologists, immunologists, and specialty care providers.

Founders

Katerina Chatzi

Founder

I believe we can discover unexpected things that can transform our lives. I have lived and performed research in 4 countries and 2 continents. Previously I was a postdoc at Harvard. I founded Promakhos because I think we have given to “autoimmune” diseases a grossly misleading name and we treat them in a primitive way. Promakhos means the first to enter a battle. In ancient Greece Promakhos was the strongest to put in the front line of an army so that they will not even have to start a battle.

Jasper Edgar Neggers

Founder

CSO and co-founder of Promakhos. In high school, Jasper built a web-shop. He obtained a BSc, MSc and PhD in Biomedical Sciences from KU Leuven. He pioneered the use of XPO1 inhibitors for treating cancer and invented a CRISPR-directed evolution technology for drug target deconvolution. Jasper then joined the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute & Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to identify and validate new drug targets for gastrointestinal cancers. Now, he develops drugs for chronic inflammation.