What are nanoantibodies and how can they be used to develop treatments for skin diseases?
Nicolás Galmarini, CEO and co-founder of Nanogrow, an entity associated with Navarra Health Cluster, presents us with the characteristics of this technology and the path of his biotech start-up specialising in the development of nanoantibodies for the human and animal pharmaceutical industry.
How did Nanogrow come into being and what were the main motivations for starting it?
With my partner Lucía Vanrell we created the company in 2021 in Uruguay seeking to combine the experience Lucía brought from her years in academia working with a very peculiar technology, nanoantibodies, and my experience in the pharmaceutical industry, with the intention of being able to generate a therapeutic disruption related to this technology. We were eager to start a purposeful venture and started working with a focus on skin diseases.
The biological technology of nanoantibodies has a high potential to work on certain pathologies, such as atopic dermatitis, which had very partial or complex solutions, and we could generate a simpler and more accessible differential therapeutic solution. From there we got investors, we started a path of building projects that led us to other business opportunities related to the area of cancer. On the other hand, we opened other business verticals with the veterinary area where we were able to connect with companies very quickly and achieve commercial success. It was 2 years of construction that allowed us to realise our first validation pathways as a platform, develop the antibodies, and one of the key things we worked on was the combination of this platform with the localised application of this technology. Nanoantibodies are the smallest antibodies that exist in nature and their stability allows them to be formulated topically, orally or inhalation.
Why does Nanogrow’s technology stand out in the healthcare sector?
At Nanogrow we are looking for much safer therapies, combining the safety of more traditional therapies with the efficacy of biological treatments, building a new generation of treatments.
The value of what we do lies in the development of localised biological therapies that have fewer side effects for the patient and generate a solution at earlier stages of diseases that are currently treated partially with products that generate resistance very quickly.
We have been incorporating our own knowledge into our nanoantibody platform. We make modifications to them so that they are more in line with the diseases we are interested to cure, with this work of continuous improvement of the antibodies we have found a very high differential with other platforms. In addition, we have specialised them a lot, we have already worked with more than 100 antigens, so we have an interesting success story that allows us to make the antibodies really efficient and work according to what we want them to work for.
What has the connection with Navarre brought you and how has it changed your work processes?
In 2022 we signed a very important collaboration with Cima, which allowed us to set up our main laboratory in Navarra. Now we are incorporated in CEIN and we have just acquired one of the warehouses, which will be ready to start working very soon.
I didn’t know the Navarre environment and it was incredible to discover all the potential offered by the ecosystem for our company: from the Navarra Health Cluster, the CEIN, the other startups… It is a very thriving ecosystem with actors who see life science biotechnology as an opportunity for development. I said to myself that this is the place where we should be and invest for the future. Navarre is a great place to negotiate with various commercial players in Europe.
At the operational level, we concentrate the veterinary operations in Uruguay and the human operations in Pamplona. Our platform starts with the llamas, we have a field in Uruguay with the animals, so the extraction and immunisation process is done from there and then they are sent to Navarre, where we have more resources and where we can do the more complex, more creative part with the clinical development.
How would you summarize the past year and what are the forecasts for 2025?
The consolidation of our position in Navarre is undoubtedly one of the major milestones of the past year; today Nanogrow is a company from Navarre in every sense of the word. 2024 has been a year of many achievements where we have fulfilled our objectives: the consolidation of a team of 12 people, almost all of them with doctoral degrees; the support of a very strong team of advisors; the expansion to the United States with the hiring of a business developer. We have reached scientific and commercial milestones that have allowed us to leverage our project.
We are now making decisions related to our lead candidates, with in vitro and in vivo testing to obtain the scientific validations that will allow us to advance our projects to the clinical stage. With this information, we also want to finalise an A-series of investment that will allow us to move to the clinical stage. 2025 will be a year of a lot of construction to be able to open our series in early 2026.
In addition, for 2025, we are looking to establish conversations with key pharma players that can be transformed into future commercial agreements. Our presence in Navarre is opening up a lot of opportunities for us, we have had contact with companies that have a lot of potential and for a structure like ours, being able to receive feedback from customers is essential. Collaboration with actors such as CEIN and Navarra Health Cluster brings us closer to renowned companies that would be very difficult to reach on our own.
In 2025, we would also like to open new lines of development to diversify our portfolio. We have obtained an important support from CDTI (Centre for Technological Development and Innovation of the Spanish Government) that allows us to expand our developments towards a therapeutic project in asthma. It is a project that represents a great opportunity, always taking into account the focus of our startup.
