Date: 2011-03-28
Type of information: Series A financing round
Company: Anergis (Switzerland)
Investors: Vinci Capital-Renaissance PME (Switzerland)
BioMedInvest (Switzerland)
Sunstone Capital ( Denmark)
Esperante (Sweden)
Initiative Capital Romandie (Switzerland)
private investors
Amount: CHF 18 million (€ 13,8 million)
Funding type: Series A financing round
Planned used: The proceeds of this financing will cover Anergis’s financial requirements for the next two years. In particular, the company will now conduct a large Phase II multicenter trial with AllerT, its lead product for patients allergic to birch pollen, and speed up the preclinical development of its product portfolio in its new research laboratories
Others: Based on its proprietary Contiguous Overlapping Peptides (“COPs”) technology, which Anergis acquired from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland (UNIL), the Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), the company is developing innovative SIT products containing so-called COPs that reproduce the full amino acid sequence of the allergen in separate long peptidic molecules. Anergis COPs do not cross-react with IgE, the antibody class responsible for eliciting allergic hypersensitivity. Thus, COPs can safely be administered at high doses to induce tolerance to the allergen after few injections only. Studies of COPs targeting bee venom and birch pollen allergies in both animals and humans have demonstrated excellent safety (no immediate allergic reaction) and immunogenicity (production of specific antibodies and cytokines against the original allergen) of Anergis products.
Therapeutic area: Allergic diseases - Immunological diseases
