Despite remarkable advances in healthcare, cancer remains a leading cause of mortality worldwide, making the pursuit of effective cancer medicines more relevant than ever. It is a complex disease with over 100 different types, each requiring a unique approach to treatment. The global burden of cancer is significant, with millions diagnosed each year, and it does not discriminate, affecting individuals of all ages, backgrounds, and health profiles.

Flindr Therapeutics aims to restore a patient’s impaired immune response to cancer, to tackle this Flindr Therapeutics has created a drug discovery engine to identify novel targets in cancer cells and immune cells to develop new precision cancer medicines. The drug discovery engine is a cascade of activities including target identification and validation, clinical bio-informatics and druggability assessments and is based on the "Cancer Immunogram", a framework published by leading scientists including the company's co-founder Prof. Christian Blank that focusses on seven key parameters of host and tumor interactions as observed in the clinic from patients treated with immunotherapy. The results are then novel therapeutics that are likely to be highly targeted cancer-centric therapeutics with no immune-dependency.

RNF31 is the first target that was identified with the Immunogram drug discovery engine and has since grown into the 1st program of Flindr Therapeutics, a first-in-class inhibitor of the RNF31 protein, the inhibition of RNF31 in tumors destabilizes two proteins flipping the switch from cancer cell survival to cell death. Since the first publication of the founder's research on RNF31 many other leading research groups confirmed that RNF31 represents a new exciting drug cancer target.

Flindr Therapeutics started in 2020 as a spin-off of the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NCI) and Oncode Institute. The expertise in functional genomics and immunotherapy of Flindr's founders Prof. Daniel Peeper, Prof. Christian Blank and Dr. Maarten Ligtenberg forms the basis of the Flindr technology. Through a collaboration with the immunology expert Prof. Rudi Beyaert from the Vlaams Institute voor Biotechnologie (VIB), VIB became a shareholder in the company. The NCI, Oncode and VIB combine well-established expertise in target discovery and validation, deep cancer biology insight and translation of research in new treatment paradigms and are centers of excellence in cancer research. The founders have attracted additional team members with expertise in cancer biology, functional genomics and small molecule oncology drug discovery.

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