Therapeutics · Inflammatory bowel disease
Promakhos Therapeutics
A two-person Boston biotech building an oral small molecule meant to switch the innate immune system back on in Crohn’s disease. Five years in, the work is still preclinical, and the public record holds one equity offering, one federal grant and a run of prizes.
One mouse, and a claim
In January 2022, months after Promakhos Therapeutics said it had closed its first financing round, chief executive Katerina Chatzi was asked to name a recent milestone. She picked an animal result.
“Recently, one of our molecules reversed symptoms of acute intestinal inflammation in a mouse model of autoimmunity,” she said in a Ladderworks interview republished by Nasdaq.
That sentence is the company in miniature. Four and a half years later, animal data is still the evidence Promakhos has, and it stays private, described in interviews, a grant abstract and a funder’s progress notes rather than in journals. There is no registered clinical trial and no FDA record. PubMed returns one paper carrying a Promakhos address, a methods chapter on CRISPR target identification drawn from a founder’s earlier work in Belgium.
What the company does have is a contrarian thesis and a run of judges who keep backing it.
Running the standard of care backwards
Crohn’s disease is chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract that scars and narrows the bowel. The company’s NIH grant abstract puts the population above 500,000 US patients with over 30,000 newly diagnosed each year, and states the problem flatly: “No curative treatments exist. Instead, current treatments focus on managing symptoms and reducing the occurrence of new episodes.”
Almost every approved therapy works by turning immunity down. Promakhos wants to turn part of it up. Chatzi splits the immune system into a fast innate arm and a slow adaptive arm, and argues that the damage patients feel is the second arm compensating for the first one failing.
“Existing treatments for autoimmune diseases primarily suppress the slow immune system,” she told the Greek startup newsletter Startup Pirate in November 2023. “We are taking a more direct approach by restoring the function of the fast immune system.”
The molecules are meant to copy signals gut bacteria already send. The grant abstract states the hypothesis in a line: “We hypothesize that targeted modulation of the intestinal mucosal barrier and local immune signaling in the bowel can reverse disease progression.” The drug is swallowed and meant to act locally, which is how the company expects to avoid systemic immunosuppression.
Two postdocs who walked away from the bench
Chatzi grew up in Athens, earned a PhD in biochemistry at the University of Crete, worked at Uppsala University and KU Leuven, and came to Harvard as a postdoc. The company name is a Greek loan she chose deliberately. “Promakhos means the first to enter a battle,” she writes on her Y Combinator founder page.
Jasper Edgar Neggers, the chief scientific officer, is Dutch, did his PhD at the Rega Institute for Medical Research at KU Leuven, and was among the first researchers to use CRISPR to engineer human cells. At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute he won a Damon Runyon fellowship and a National Cancer Institute Pathway to Independence award, the grant that normally launches a faculty career.
He gave it back. In the company’s own words: “So, he handed back his million-dollar grant money and joined Katerina to co-found Promakhos Therapeutics.” The Crohn’s nonprofit Propel a Cure tells the same story in its own phrasing, which is some evidence it is more than a founding legend.
In 2021 the two were first-time entrepreneurs in MassBio’s MassCONNECT program. Asked what was hardest, they did not name the science. “The biggest challenge as an emerging therapeutics startup is no doubt the continuous need to secure financing,” they said.
A timeline made of grants and prizes
The financing history reads like a list of competitions won. The Allston Venture Fund, a committee of six Massachusetts venture partners that operates independently of Harvard, voted to back the company in March 2021. Y Combinator took it into the Summer 2021 batch. In October 2021 Promakhos said it had closed a first round, backed by “various angel investors and large biotech funds.” One Form D, filed in January 2022, reports $2,246,500 raised from 25 investors.
Since then the money on record has come from panels rather than cap tables: an NIH SBIR Phase I grant of $271,865 in September 2023, a $97,500 MassNextGen award from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center in January 2024, a two-year $100,000 Trailblazer Grant from Propel a Cure in February 2024, and $75,000 from the Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge on May 6, 2026.
The company is still working. Its website carries news dated September 22, 2026. Propel a Cure’s project page, updated after the Harvard win, says that “Promakhos researchers next hope to move their candidate drug to human safety studies.” Hope is the operative word: a first-in-human study needs an investigational new drug application, and nothing public shows one has been filed.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| NIH SBIR Phase I | 1R43DK135153-01, NIDDK, $271,865, PI Jasper E. Neggers. Preclinical validation of small molecule immunomodulators for Crohn’s disease. Ran Sep 1, 2023 to Mar 31, 2024. No Phase II follows. | Public record |
| Equity raised | One Form D, filed Jan 19, 2022. $2,246,500 offered and sold, 25 investors, first sale Mar 12, 2021, Rule 506(b). No later filing. | Public record |
| Clinical trials | No study sponsored by Promakhos found in registry searches as of Sep 22, 2026. | Not found |
| FDA record | No 510(k), no PMA, no approval. Expected at this stage, and worth stating plainly. | Not found |
| Peer-reviewed output | One PubMed record carries a Promakhos affiliation: a 2022 Methods in Molecular Biology chapter on CRISPR target identification, from Neggers with former KU Leuven colleagues. Nothing on the Crohn’s program. | Public record |
| Preclinical results | Propel a Cure, which funded the work, reports the candidate “has shown promising results, promoting intestinal healing, clearance of invasive microbes and gut microbiome diversity, as well as reducing bowel inflammation.” Data not public. | Funder-stated |
| Outside review | Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge $75,000 winner, May 2026. MassNextGen awardee, Jan 2024. Propel a Cure Trailblazer Grant after competitive review, Feb 2024. | Independent |
| Patient population | The NIH abstract and the Y Combinator page put Crohn’s above 500,000 Americans. Chatzi told Startup Pirate it affects over 700,000. | Figures differ |
| Efficacy ceiling | The website says only 25 percent of patients benefit from existing therapies long term. Chatzi told Startup Pirate only 20 percent do. Neither figure carries a citation. | Figures differ |
| Prize amount | The company calls MassNextGen about $100K. The state agency release says $97,500 per company, already including sponsor funds and in-kind services. | Rounded up |
Read plainly: Promakhos is a credentialed two-person team with a mechanism that runs against the field, roughly $2.8 million of traceable money, and no human data. The competitions it keeps winning are judged by people who read the science, which counts for something, but none of them is a trial. Closing the distance to a first-in-human study costs more than every grant and prize the company has won put together.
What to watch
- An IND filing, or a registry entry for a Phase 1 safety study. The company’s funder says that is the next intended step.
- A second Form D. The only one on file dates from January 2022, and the prizes since are too small to fund IND-enabling toxicology.
- An NIH SBIR Phase II application. Phase I ended March 31, 2024, with no follow-on award in the record.
- Team growth beyond the two founders. Listings put headcount at two or three.
In their words
“Recently, one of our molecules reversed symptoms of acute intestinal inflammation in a mouse model of autoimmunity.”
Katerina Chatzi, co-founder and CEO, Ladderworks interview on Nasdaq, 2022 · Interview
“We believe we need to do the opposite. We need to empower our innate immune system, not suppress it, to maintain a balance with our microbes and resolve inflammation.”
Katerina Chatzi, Startup Pirate, 2023 · Interview
“When you have something that disruptive, you obviously face resistance, right? Particularly from financiers of drug development who tend to be conservative.”
Katerina Chatzi, Startup Pirate, 2023 · Interview
“When we started the company, we needed to raise capital and almost everyone said no.”
Katerina Chatzi, Ladderworks interview on Nasdaq, 2022 · Interview
“The biggest challenge as an emerging therapeutics startup is no doubt the continuous need to secure financing.”
Katerina Chatzi and Jasper E. Neggers, MassBio, 2021 · Interview
“We are developing a non-immunosuppressive treatment for inflammatory diseases, one that holds the promise of breaking the efficacy ceiling and of potentially reversing the disease.”
Promakhos Therapeutics, company news on the Harvard prize, May 2026 · Company-stated
“Promakhos researchers next hope to move their candidate drug to human safety studies.”
Propel a Cure for Crohn’s Disease, research projects page, 2026 · Funder
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordNIH RePORTER 1R43DK135153-01, with abstract
- Public recordForm D, Promakhos Therapeutics Inc., CIK 0001889681
- Public recordPubMed 34709610, CRISPR-Cas mutagenesis scanning for drug target identification
- Public recordFDA and clinical trial registry searches returning no Promakhos entries
- IndependentFinalists recognized in University’s flagship venture competition
- IndependentPresident’s Innovation Challenge 2026 winners and finalists
- IndependentMLSC announces MassNextGen awardees
- IndependentCrohn’s Disease and IBD Research Projects
- InterviewDeveloping Therapies for Chronic Diseases
- InterviewKaterina Chatzi: Curative Therapies for Autoimmune Diseases
- IndependentPromakhos Therapeutics portfolio page
- CompanyPromakhos Therapeutics website, team and news archive
- CompanyPromakhos Therapeutics closes first financing round
- CompanyEarly seed investment from the Allston Venture Fund
- CompanyCompany and founder pages
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
