Date: 2012-03-22
Type of information: Fundraising
Company: Enterome Bioscience (France)
Investors: Seventure Partners (France) - Lundbeckfond Ventures (Denmark)
Amount: €5 million
Funding type: series A financing round
Planned used: The amount raised will enable Enterome to fulfil several objectives. Firstly, Enterome will validate its proprietary biomarkers and translate them into high value medical diagnostics and to commercialize it as Laboratory Developed Test services in the US and EU. The company also plans to initiate industrial partnerships (in the pharmaceutical and the nutrition fields) to strengthen its development capabilities. Enterome’s two lead projects are in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) and in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD).
Others: Enterome Bioscience, a stratified medicine company developing biomarkers for chronic and challenging medical conditions relating to abnormalities of bacterial composition of the human intestine (metabolic and bowel diseases),has announced a first closing of a series A funding round, raising € 5 million. This funding follows a previous seed round that raised € 1.5 million from Seventure Partners (Natixis) and INRA Transfert.
The new management team is made up of a blend of former founders and executives of Fovea Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Sanofi in 2009) and biomarkers specialists. Bernard Gilly was also appointed as the new chairman of the board.
“The series A round investors - Seventure and Lundbeckfond Ventures - were specifically attracted to Enterome due to the unique nature of its technology, the close relationship to INRA and the opportunity to create unique biomarker diagnostic products meeting unmet medical and market needs,” said Pierre Belichard, CEO, Enterome.
The human intestine harbors an incredible number of bacteria, the gut microbiota, encoding 150-fold more genes than the human genome. Each individual has his own personal and unique microbiota, with a large diversity between individuals. Over the last 5 years, physicians and researchers have proved the undisputed role of gut microbiota in the development of various diseases, especially metabolic disorders and inflammatory bowel diseases. These diseases affect 25% of the western world population, with NASH, the most harmful, diagnosed in 2 – 3% of the population globally
Enterome’s technology was developed initially at the INRA (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique) by Dusko Ehrlich at Jouy-en-Josas, France. Enterome has entered into a collaboration agreement with INRA, providing the company with exclusive access to discoveries made using this metagenomic platform in selected human pathologies including type 2 diabetes, liver and bowel diseases.
Therapeutic area: Digestive diseases - Inflammatory diseases
