Funding
Opsona Therapeutics, a specialist in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases announced the completion of a €18 million Series B financing round, with Novartis Venture Fund, Fountain Healthcare Partners, Inventages Venture Capital and Seroba Kernel Life Sciences as investors. Florent Gros, managing director at Novartis Venture Fund, and Dr. Manus Rogan, managing partner at Fountain Healthcare Partners, are to join the Board of Directors.
The money will pay for clinical trials targeting inflammatory diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and transplantation.
Mark Heffernan, CEO, said, “The completion of this financing represents a significant milestone in the transition of Opsona into a product-focused company delivering key clinical development milestones. [We are] positioned to deliver proof of concept studies in patients by targeting inflammatory diseases through the innate immune system.”
Opsona is developing biopharmaceutical and small-molecule products which modulate the innate immune system, the key trigger in the inflammation cascade in many autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The lead product, a fully humanised monoclonal antibody (OPN-305) to a key toll-like receptor (TLR) target, has demonstrated efficacy in a number of animal models and will start clinical trials in 2010.
Florent Gros, managing director, Novartis Venture Fund said, “The innate immune system represents a new frontier in targeting inflammatory diseases, and the calibre of the investors in this funding round is a demonstration of Opsona’s expertise and capabilities in this highly promising field.”
The Dublin-based company also announced the opening of a new facility in Switzerland to carry out assay development and biochemical work for new projects and therapeutics recently acquired by Opsona.
Cormac Kilty, Chairman of Opsona and past Chairman of the Irish Bioindustry Association, said, “This is major achievement for any biotechnology company in the current economic climate. Opsona’s R&D shows that emerging Irish companies can reach international recognition in biotechnology.” The company was founded in 2004 by three immunologists from Trinity College Dublin
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