Santiago de Compostela, 18 January 2026. A total of €1.84 million from the Spanish State Research Agency (AERIS) has been awarded to investigate antibodies against inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). This funding was recently secured by the Santiago-based biotechnology company SunRock Biopharma, a pioneering firm focused on developing treatments for resistant diseases. The project, called Catib, is led by this technology company and involves both public and private entities. In fact, collaboration with hospitals is key, and in this case, the following institutions are involved: IDIS (Institute for Biomedical Research of Galicia South), CIC bioGune in the Basque Country, and the Foundation for Research in Biomedicine and Health in Málaga.
SunRock’s line of work is clear: to develop therapeutic antibodies. And their target is equally clear: diseases resistant to current treatments, both within the field of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and cancer. Juan Buela, manager, explains: “In oncology, we focus on those tumors that are currently difficult to treat, specifically those subgroups of ovarian cancer resistant to current treatment, and pancreatic cancer, which unfortunately does not have a good prognosis overall.”
In these cases, they have already developed antibodies and licensed the results to reach the market through partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies, while in the case of inflammatory bowel disease, within the Catib project, this would be the first. These types of pathologies—which include, for example, ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease—are highly debilitating for a certain group of patients. Some patients respond very well to therapies, others for whom no treatment works, and a third group that eventually becomes resistant to it. The project focuses on those patients with a poor prognosis. “The novelty is that,” explains Buela, “we only target CCR9 lymphocytes, which play a key role in the disease. They represent approximately 3-6% of the total. The rest of the lymphocytes and the immune system are not affected, so there are no side effects.”
This is the project’s major contribution, as no one has previously worked on this target, which offers a high degree of safety. Having demonstrated that the antibody works very well, they now want to determine where it is most effective, “and that will allow us to know where we need to conduct the clinical trial.” This trial could begin in two years if the positive results continue, before the end of the three-year Catib project, which runs until December 2028. The team is working with SRB5, an investigational antibody targeting CCR9, a cell involved in inflammatory processes. They are seeking to advance its preclinical phase, the necessary step before any further biomedical development.
In this research, as well as in their work on cancer treatments, collaboration with hospitals is essential. However, this biotechnology company emphasizes that patient samples will not leave the hospital; “once the informed consent process is complete, it will be the hospitals—CHUS, Chuvi, and the Málaga hospital—that analyze the samples and provide us with the results.”
The result is licensed
The possibility of a biotech company like SunRock bringing the treatment to market is nil. Developing a drug from the start of the clinical phase can cost up to 800 million euros. Therefore, what this team does is develop and validate the antibody, and conduct clinical trials in phases 1A and 1B—that is, the safety phase—and a clinical trial with a small number of patients to demonstrate efficacy. “From there, we license it to a large pharmaceutical company, which has the capacity both to conduct the trial globally and, and this is also very important, to bring the drug to market,” the company explains.
The therapies they have licensed are three, all aimed at cancer treatments. The results were so positive that in this case they didn’t even have to carry out the clinical phase, but were licensed directly from the preclinical stage.
SunRock always works in direct collaboration with hospitals. For ovarian cancer therapies, they partner with Vall d’Hebron Hospital in Barcelona, and for pancreatic cancer, with the CHUS (through IDIS). In these cases, therapeutic antibodies are effective, but the tumors are so aggressive that a chemical attack is necessary. This type of therapy, Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC), combines the precision of antibodies with the potency of cytotoxic drugs, creating precision chemotherapy. The cytotoxic agent reaches the tumor cell but not other cells. This is a completely pioneering therapeutic arsenal, and in fact, the first ADCs will begin reaching patients this year. This small company, based in the A Sionlla biopark (Santiago de Compostela), works with an open innovation system with one goal: to provide solutions for resistant diseases.
A project that goes hand in hand with hospitals
One of the characteristics of this biotechnology company is its connection to the community’s hospital network. Of the €1.84 million allocated to the Catib project, almost €400,000 is provided as a grant to Galician teams through IDIS, the Galicia Sur Health Research Institute. “Leading a project funded by the Spanish State Research Agency from Galicia and doing so in collaboration with hospital teams is an opportunity to combine capabilities here: in business, in healthcare institutes, and in the Galician biomedical ecosystem.”
Article taken from La Voz de Galicia: Antibodies designed in Galicia for the most resistant diseases
