ProtAffin closes €14.1M second round

Funding

Glycobiology specialist ProtAffin AG has announced the completion of a €14.1 million second round, co-led by Atlas Venture and SR One Ltd, the corporate venture fund of GlaxoSmithKline. Existing investors Aescap Venture, Entrepreneurs Fund and Z-Cube followed on. Regina Hodits of Atlas Venture and Deborah Harland of SR One will join ProtAffin’s supervisory board.

ProtAffin’s products are first-in-class engineered versions of human proteins that bind to cell surface sugars called glycans to modulate their biological activity. Activated versions of specific cell surface glycans underlie inflammatory processes in several diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, Crohn’s disease and cancer. As such they represent a rich and relatively under-investigated class of potential drug target.  

The new money will be used to complete the pre-clinical development and Phase I testing of the lead product PA401, a modified form of the human chemokine IL-8/CXCL8, which has shown anti-inflammatory activity in both chronic and acute preclinical models. The company also plans to push other products formal pre-clinical development and broaden application of its CellJammer discovery platform into oncology.

Jason Slingsby, CEO, said, “We are delighted to have secured a substantial [second round] equity financing with a world-class syndicate of venture capital investors in testing times in the financial markets. Atlas and SR One will significantly broaden the investor base of ProtAffin and strengthen our network across Europe and the US.”

Regina Hodits, a partner at Atlas Venture, said ProtAffin’s expertise in protein-glycan interactions clearly differentiates it from monoclonal antibody or scaffold companies. “ProtAffin has not only a lead programme, to provide relatively quick clinical data relating to a highly innovative mechanism of action, but also a platform which has already generated a number of promising compounds.”