TreeFrog Therapeutics secures €30 million from EIB

TreeFrog Therapeutics, a French biotech specializing in cell therapy, has secured a €30 million financing from the European Investment Bank (EIB). The financing will support the advancement of their lead cell therapy program in Parkinson’s Disease to the clinic.  This cell therapy  has the potential to be a best-in-class treatment due to its unique 3D format microtissues, developed from induced pluripotent cells (iPSC).
The program is on track to be ready for a first-in-human trial in 2027. The €30 million financing will be available in 3 tranches of €10 million each, with TreeFrog benefiting from a new vehicle from the EIB, mixing dilutive financing, hence no principal repayment required for the initial two tranches and venture debt for the last tranche. The initial €10 million will be withdrawn during the second quarter of 2025. Funds will also be used to reinforce ThreeFrog Therapeutics’ internal pipeline in other disease areas with large unmet needs. Since 2021, the company has raised $82 million to advance a pipeline of stem cell-based therapies in regenerative medicine.

Combining microfluidics and stem cell biology
This program is based on TreeFrog Therapy’s C-Stem™ proprietary platform that integrates a GMP encapsulation technology, achieving the delivery of 15 billion cells in a single batch. A distinctive attribute of C-Stem™ is its capability to amplify and differentiate cells within a closed system, thereby enabling enhanced quality control. Last September, TreeFrog and the University of Bordeaux have reported the first successfull bioproduction of a cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease in a scalable bioreactor, leading to a full behavioural recovery 16 weeks after transplantation using cryopreserved 3D format (Neurotherapeutics, 2024, Volume 21, Issue 5, doi: 10.1016/j.neurot.2024.e00436). This publication has reinforced the potential of TreeFrog’s cell therapy to provide protection to the more mature, sensitive cells that are neurons. The system is also ready at commercial scale for the Parkinson’s disease cell therapy, with doses for hundreds of patients in one 10L bioreactor.

27/05/2025