Date: 2012-03-26
Type of information: Fundraising
Company: ADC Therapeutics (Switzerland)
Investors: Celtic Therapeutics (USA-UK-Switzerland) - co-founders of Spirogen (UK) - Cancer Research Technology (UK)
Amount: $50 million (€37.4 million)
Funding type: fundraising
Planned used: These funds are used to create a new company, ADC Therapeutics.
Others: The private equity firm Celtic Therapeutics Management has launched a new Switzerland-based company, ADC Therapeutics Sarl. The company has been formed with a pipeline of ten proprietary ADC (antibody drug conjugates) oncology development programs, targeting multiple major cancers, including prostate, renal, breast, lung and blood cancers. ADC Therapeutics has been granted an initial budget of $50 million. ADC Therapeutics, to be headquartered from Lausanne, Switzerland, will focus on driving its ten initial ADC programs through pre-clinical assessment over the next twelve months and will move the first of these into clinical development within two years. The Company’s strategy will be to seek development and marketing partners after Phase II proof of concept (POC). The objective is to achieve clinical POC in Phase II studies in several programs within three to five years. Celtic Therapeutics is the majority owner of ADC Therapeutics, alongside certain co-founders of Spirogen, and is also the majority owner of Spirogen. UK specialist commercialization and development company Cancer Research Technology Ltd is also a shareholder in ADC Therapeutics. The board of directors includes Michael Forer, CEO ADC Therapeutics and Partner in Celtic Therapeutics together with Dr. Peter B. Corr and Stephen Evans-Freke, Co-Founders and Managing General Partners of Celtic Therapeutics, and Dr. Christopher Martin, CEO of Spirogen. Celtic Therapeutics has also attracted eminent oncology experts Dr. Samuel Broder and Dr. Barrie Ward as non-executive directors of ADC Therapeutics. Dr. Broder is the former Director of the National Cancer Institute in the USA from 1989?95 and founding member of Celera in 1998. Dr. Ward is the former CEO of oncology company KuDOS Pharmaceuticals prior to its sale to AstraZeneca.
These ADC programs are based on cytotoxic warhead and linker chemistry developed by UK-based Spirogen. The warheads are based on proprietary pyrrolobenzodiazepines ("PBDs") "payload" technology developed by Spirogen and scientists at University College, London, over the past 10 years, expertly designed to maintain warhead potency and water solubility when linked to antibodies, and potentially minimize drug resistance.
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
