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Back when I interviewed David and Emma from DSW Ventures in October, they were very excited about a deal they were involved with, but couldn’t talk about publicly yet.

That deal turned out to be a lead investment in Belfast’s Dia Beta Labs. I spoke to the startup myself a little later in October, but had to hold this piece back until the deal was due to be announced, which turned out to be just before Christmas. Today is the first chance we’ve had to run the interview.

They might have already raised their first round but they’re still very much in PreSeed Now territory. So read on to find out all about what they’re up to.

But first: When we ran our catchup pieces about startups we’ve previously covered before Christmas, there’s one we didn’t include (sorry!). So here it is…

• AI-assisted business insights startup Intriq (which we first covered last May) has pivoted from private equity into the busier market of management consulting.

• “We’re dedicated to assisting clients in processing financial data – something currently unachievable with GPT or Claude without encountering critical errors,” co-founder Jess Liew says.

• Liew adds that Intriq has also signed up three pilot customers and established a strategic partnership with a ‘Big 4’ consulting firm.

– Martin

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How Dia Beta Labs is developing a next-generation weight-loss drug

Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy seem to have come out of nowhere to transform weight loss in recent years, but as revolutionary as they have been, they’re not perfect.

Side-effects of these drugs include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhoea, and that can limit their long-term usefulness.

Looking to address these problems with its own solution is Belfast-based Dia Beta Labs. This Ulster University spin-out is developing its own similar drug without the side effects.

“Drugs like Ozempic have been on the market for a long time in relation to diabetes, but have really become household names in the last two years because of their transition to management of weight, independent of diabetes,” explains Dia Beta Labs co-founder and CEO Ryan Lafferty.

“What has been established is that they have really high discontinuation rates owing to side effects. But the other issue that's coming to light is the kind of weight loss that they bring about. If you quantify their weight loss in terms of a percentage body weight reduction, they look phenomenal, but actually they cause patients to lose a lot of muscle mass.”

And so Dia Beta Labs’ is developing a drug that can target fat while sparing muscle mass and not causing those inconvenient side-effects that can put patients off continuing with the treatment.

The startup’s lead candidate drug is called DBL2. Lafferty says it’s based around a reverse-engineered protein hormone, developed from work he did for his PhD. 

“We've identified a novel target in metabolic disease management. During my PhD, I had explored this target and the hormone activator of it within our bodies,” he says.

The problem? That hormone is quickly broken down in the body, meaning a drug based on it would need to be continuously infused. Not very practical!

To overcome this, Dia Beta Labs looked at how the hormone is broken down, and how they could protect it from enzymes in the body.

Lafferty says work has been ongoing on this treatment for around eight years, including a pause during the Covid restrictions. It was originally intended to be a treatment solely for diabetes.

“The molecule rescues the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, which are progressively lost in type two diabetes. Typically, people will have lost around 50% of those cells by the time they're diagnosed… 

“The vicious cycle within that is that, because blood glucose demands rise, the pancreas is forced to work even harder, which then means that that reduced cell mass is caused to work order, and eventually begins to die off. Our molecule rescues that through resting and allowing those cells to replenish,” says Lafferty.

More recently, the team realised DBL2 could be a suitable treatment for weight loss, too. 

Lafferty says that it works well on its own in this regard, and could provide even better results if combined with GLP-1 based drugs such as Ozempic or Wegovy.

Lafferty says their research in this field is garnering promising results.

“What we've been able to establish is that we can combine with drugs that are on the market to bring their dosage down by up to 2,000 fold in animals. But additionally, whenever we combine with those drugs, we can actually double the amount of weight loss attained, and improve that ratio of the amount of fat to muscle loss.”

The story so far

Before his PhD, Lafferty worked in community pharmacies, where he encountered the diverse medical needs of diabetes patients. 

After spending some time as a consultant pharmacist for a company developing diabetes treatments, he began his PhD at Ulster University in 2016, researching novel treatments for diabetes and obesity. 

Innovate UK’s ICURe programme helped him think more commercially about the IP he’d developed working as part of the university's diabetes research group. This allowed him to put together a case to spin out Dia Beta Labs, which then happened in 2022.

“I would say that the business owes a lot to the ICURe programme,” Lafferty says. 

“I don't think I would be here otherwise. I never had grand ambitions of being an entrepreneur. I dipped my toe in through ICURe, and then learned that I enjoyed it.”

After beginning with Lafferty as the only full-time team member, Dia Beta Labs has recently expanded, with now two full-time employees, plus six part-time.

Still in a pre-clinical stage, the startup has conducted its research for DBL 2 so far in mice. 

Lafferty says the next stage involves tests on rats with a view to creating longer-acting versions of the compound. While DBL 2 would currently need to be administered daily, the market is moving toward demand for weekly, monthly, or even yearly doses for these kinds of treatments.

Funding

Dia Beta Labs has been funded by grants to date, along with a £150,000 investment from Ulster University.

Its new £1.2 million round is made up of 50/50 match funding between equity-based investment and grant funding. The equity-based funding was led by DSW Ventures, with participation from QUBIS.

This funding has allowed Dia Beta Labs to continue its pre-clinical research as it continues the long, careful journey that is bringing a medicine to market.

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