7TM closes $15M round and sells rights to OSI

Investment | Sale

7TM Pharma has raised $15 million from its current investors, enabling the company to continue developing its pipeline of compounds targeting metabolic disorders and obesity.

These include TM30339, a Y4 selective agonist, and TM38837, a peripherally acting CB1 antagonist that is designed to avoid the side effects on the central nervous system seen with previous CB1 antagonists. The company is completing pre-clinical development of TM38837, which showed a strong effect on weight loss in animal models, and plans to start Phase I clinical development shortly.

“7TM Pharma has a novel and very compelling pipeline of new treatments for obesity and metabolic disorders,” says Mette Kirstine Agger, CEO. “The strong financial support from our investors in tough financial markets shows their commitment to 7TM Pharma and our pipeline.”

At the same time 7TM, of Horsholm in Denmark, entered an agreement with OSI (Prosidion), a UK subsidiary of OSI Pharmaceuticals, in which 7TM sold certain early stage discovery assets and technology to OSI (Prosidion). As part of the agreement, 7TM Pharma will support OSI(Prosidion) in installing the technology. Agger said, “With this agreement, 7TM Pharma has once again demonstrated its ability to obtain considerable value from early stage assets based upon good science on interesting targets.”

“The sale of these early-stage assets [...] allows us to strategically focus on further development of our late stage discovery and development programmes.”

The basis for 7TM Pharma’s drug discovery engine is its expertise in seven transmembrane domain receptors (which are also known as G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs)). The company’s investors include Novo A/S, Alta Partners, LD Pensions, Index Ventures, Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation, Dansk Innovationsinvestering, Sofinnova Capital, Healthcare Private Equity Limited Partnership, Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch & Cie, SR One, Global Life Science Ventures, Baker/Tisch Investments, Credit Agricole Private Equity, GIMV and BioMedinvest AG.