Caldan Therapeutics

What Caldan Therapeutics does

Caldan Therapeutics is a privately-held biopharmaceutical company founded in 2014 as a spin-out of Professor Trond Ulven's research at the University of Southern Denmark. Operating as a small UK private company with 1-10 employees, Caldan is headquartered in Edinburgh and organised around translating academic receptor-pharmacology research into drug candidates. The company is led by CEO Mark Payton alongside founder/director Professor Trond Ulven, co-founder/director Graeme Milligan and CFO Julian Lord.

The company is positioned as an early-stage R&D entity in the metabolic disease therapeutics space, the area of its academic founder's research. Its underlying technical foundation is a portfolio of intellectual property and biological insights derived from the Ulven laboratory at the University of Southern Denmark, with two of the three co-founders retaining board involvement. No products, pipeline assets, partnerships, or licensing transactions are disclosed in the available data, indicating that Caldan remains in a pre-clinical or early translational posture without commercial outputs.

Across its capital history, Caldan has raised on the order of $8.7 million in disclosed funding over three rounds (a 2015 Series 2 led by Epidarex Capital with Eli Lilly, Science Ventures, Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Investment Bank participating; a 2016 Pitch@Palace selection; and a 2019 tranche led by the UK translational charity LifeArc). Investor composition points to a capital strategy that mixes specialist life-sciences VC, pharma corporate venture, public-sector translational funding and regional development capital. The company's business model and revenue mechanics are not disclosed in the input data; on the basis of size, sector and funding pattern it is most plausibly a pre-clinical asset developer reliant on equity financing and potentially future licensing or partnered development, but no commercial pricing, customers, or go-to-market channels are documented in the inputs.

Note on data quality: a substantial portion of the structured input relates to an unrelated online gaming platform (KakekMerah4D) and contains no information about Caldan Therapeutics; that material has been disregarded for analytical purposes.

Name

Caldan Therapeutics

Website

https://caldantherapeutics.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2015

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Caldan Therapeutics is an Edinburgh-based, pre-clinical therapeutics company spun out of Professor Trond Ulven's laboratory at the University of Southern Denmark, developing drug candidates in metabolic disease with backing from life-sciences venture and translational investors.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Preclinical Small-Molecule Therapeutics

NAICS

Research and Development in Biotechnology (except Nanobiotechnology) (541714), Scientific Research and Development Services (5417)

SIC

Pharmaceutical Preparations (2834)

akta.pro industry

PRIMARYHLAIAIAB

Enzyme Replacement & Metabolic Disorder Therapies

Healthcare & Life Sciences/Pharmaceuticals/Orphan & Rare Disease Pharmaceuticals

Keywords

• Drug discovery
• Small molecule therapeutics
• Pharmaceutical research
• Academic spin-out biotech
• Preclinical drug development

Headquarters

HQ city

Edinburgh

HQ country

United Kingdom

HQ region

Europe

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Hardware or Manufacturing

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Operations, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales

Core offering

Caldan Therapeutics Ltd is an Edinburgh-based pharmaceutical/biotech spin-out that translates academic research from a long-standing collaboration with Professor Trond Ulven at the University of Southern Denmark into proprietary small-molecule drug candidates. Its core activity is discovery-stage medicinal chemistry and therapeutic research, with the long-term objective of developing treatments for unmet medical needs and commercialising them via licensing or partnership with larger pharmaceutical companies.

Product overview

No information available about Caldan Therapeutics products or services in the provided source data. The source content pertains to KakekMerah4D, an online slot gaming platform, not to Caldan Therapeutics.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Recent moves4 records

Expansion highlights3 records

Direct peers

• Pila Pharma: A small European biotech developing novel therapeutics for Type 2 diabetes. Highly comparable to Caldan as a small-cap, metabolic-disease focused drug-discovery company at a similar stage.
• vTv Therapeutics: Clinical-stage biopharma focused on small-molecule therapeutics for Type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders. Comparable in therapeutic focus (metabolic disease) and small-molecule modality.
• Heptares Therapeutics (Sosei Heptares): Pioneer in GPCR-targeted drug discovery, including metabolic and endocrine indications. Comparable in receptor-based small-molecule approach and metabolic disease pipeline.

Emerging players

• Crinetics Pharmaceuticals: Focused on GPCR-targeted therapeutics for endocrine and metabolic diseases. Comparable target-class biology (GPCRs, including free fatty acid receptors) and metabolic indication strategy.
• Madrigal Pharmaceuticals: Focused on therapies for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (NASH/MASH) and other metabolic conditions. Comparable in metabolic-disease therapeutic focus, though at a more advanced clinical stage.
• Inversago Pharma: Develops peripherally-acting CB1 receptor antagonists for metabolic disorders including diabetes and obesity. Comparable small-molecule metabolic-disease approach and indication overlap.
• NGM Biopharmaceuticals: Discovers and develops biologics and small molecules for metabolic and other diseases. Comparable in metabolic-disease focus and discovery-stage to clinical-stage pipeline.
• Zafgen: Developed novel small molecules targeting MetAP2 for metabolic disorders including Type 2 diabetes and obesity. Comparable as a small-molecule metabolic-disease biotech, albeit with past clinical setbacks.
• CymaBay Therapeutics: Clinical-stage biopharma developing therapies for liver and metabolic diseases. Comparable metabolic-disease focus and small-molecule approach (acquired by Gilead in 2024).
• Structure Therapeutics: Develops oral small molecules targeting GPCRs for metabolic and other diseases. Comparable in GPCR-driven drug discovery and metabolic-disease focus.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/caldanthera
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/caldan-therapeutics

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles4 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds3 records

Investors7 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Caldan Therapeutics