Confo Therapeutics is a rising star in Belgium, featured on several local and international lists of up-and-coming biotechs. The company, launched in 2015 as a VUB/VIB spin-off is now taking the big step from the preclinical to the clinical stage with a GPCR drug for neuropathic pain.
Based on the work of Nobel Prize laureate, Brian Kobilka and research from the lab of Jan Steyaert at VUB, Confo has developed a platform enabling drug discovery for GPCRs – a large family of proteins that play a role in numerous diseases but are notoriously difficult to drug. GPCRs are often hard to screen in the lab because they are unstable outside of their natural environment, but Confo’s antibodies – ConfoBodies® – keep the proteins stable, enabling the mass screening and identification of potential targets for diseases that were previously undruggable.