Funding | Grant
Cancer specialist Elara Pharmaceuticals GmbH has closed a €2.6 million first round, thus triggering an additional €2 million from the BMBF GOBio and the Biotechnologie Rhein-Neckar Spitzencluster programmes, to bring total funding to €4.6 million.
The lead investor EMBL Ventures, Heidelberg, was joined by Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), Bonn, and Wagnisfinanzierungsgesellschaft für Technologieförderung in Rheinland-Pfalz mbH (WFT), Mainz, a subsidiary of Investitions- und Strukturbank Rheinland-Pfalz (ISB) GmbH.
Elara also announced the appointment of Christof Antz, formerly Managing Partner at EMBL Ventures and Chairman of the company’s board, as Chief Business Officer.
“We are pleased to have attracted this group of experienced biotech investors,” Antz said. "The proceeds of this round will enable us to advance our lead product candidate through [to Phase I trials] for the treatment of multiple myeloma. In a short period of time, Elara has been able to develop its preclinical hypoxia signalling antagonist program to an impressive, best–in-class series of drug candidates.”
The Hypoxia Inducible Factor (HIF) signalling pathway is central for regulating the transcription of genes in response to decreases of oxygen, or hypoxia, and is crucial for tumour growth, vascularisation, the formation of metastases and treatment failure.
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