BIMINI Biotech and Radboudumc awarded Health Holland SME grant to advance novel therapeutics for autoimmune diseases

Leiden, 11 September 2026 – BIMINI Biotech has been awarded funding through the Health Holland SME Call for Public-Private Partnerships 2026 for a collaborative research project with Radboud University Medical Center (Radboudumc). The project, AUTO-WASP, will explore and advance a novel therapeutic approach targeting the Wiskott–Aldrich Syndrome Protein (WASp) for the treatment of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

The AUTO-WASP project brings together BIMINI Biotech, as project lead, and the research group of Assistant Professor Marije Koenders at the Department of Rheumatology and Laboratory of Experimental Rheumatology at Radboudumc. This €532.292 project will further develop BIMINI’s proprietary small-molecule WASp modulators as potential first-in-class treatments for autoimmune disorders.

WASp is a key regulator of immune-cell function and cytoskeletal dynamics and represents a largely unexplored therapeutic target in autoimmune disease. By pharmacologically modulating WASp activity, BIMINI aims to develop a new treatment modality capable of intervening in disease-driving immune processes through a differentiated mechanism of action.

Despite significant advances in the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, a substantial proportion of patients do not achieve adequate or sustained disease control with existing therapies. Many patients require sequential treatment with multiple disease-modifying or biologic therapies, while long-term immunosuppression can be associated with significant side effects. These limitations highlight the need for new therapeutic approaches with differentiated mechanisms of action that more directly target the biological processes driving chronic inflammation and autoimmune disease.

Dr. Digvijay Gahtory, CEO and co-founder of BIMINI Biotech:

“This collaboration opens an exciting new avenue for our WASp platform beyond oncology. The biology of WASp gives us a compelling opportunity to explore a fundamentally different approach to treating autoimmune disease. Our early findings are encouraging, and working with Marije Koenders and her team at Radboudumc will allow us to rigorously investigate this potential and determine how we can translate it into new therapeutic opportunities for patients.”

Assistant Professor Marije Koenders, Radboudumc:

“Many autoimmune diseases remain difficult to treat, underscoring the need for innovative therapeutic approaches that go beyond currently targeted pathways. AUTO-WASP provides a unique opportunity to investigate WASp signaling, a largely unexplored mechanism in autoimmunity. By combining BIMINI’s drug discovery expertise with our disease biology knowledge, we aim to uncover insights that may lead to new treatment possibilities for patients across multiple autoimmune conditions.”

Through AUTO-WASP, BIMINI Biotech and Radboudumc aim to establish the preclinical foundation for a new class of WASp-targeting therapies for autoimmune disease. The project also represents an important step in broadening the therapeutic potential of BIMINI’s WASp platform across both oncology and immune-mediated diseases.

The collaboration project HH-PPS-25189-MKB is co-funded by PPP subsidy awarded by Health Holland to stimulate public-private partnerships.

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ABOUT BIMINI

BIMINI Biotech is a preclinical stage company developing novel first-in-class small molecule therapeutics in oncology with a focus on lymphomas and leukemia, malignancies with a strong unmet need. The company was established in 2019 and is based in Leiden (The Netherlands).

ABOUT RADBOUDUMC

Radboud university medical center is a university medical center for patient care, research and education, located in Nijmegen. Radboud university medical center strives to be at the forefront of shaping the health and healthcare of the future. This is reflected in our mission: ‘to have a significant impact on health and healthcare’. It demands that we innovate and reinvigorate through collaboration within our networks and with the focus on the individual person. We mainly concentrate on prevention, meaningful and prudent healthcare, sustainability, artificial intelligence and data-driven systems, the molecular mechanisms of diseases and new treatments, and training the professionals of tomorrow.