Leuven: Okapi raises €8.5M for vet drugs

Funding round completed

Okapi Sciences NV, a Belgian biopharmaceutical start-up developing antiviral drugs for veterinary applications, has closed a €8.5 million round. The investment was led by the Agri Investment Fund and the Dutch Thuja Capital, with participations from Fortis Private Equity Arkimedes, KBC Arkiv, the Flemish innovation fund Vinnof, the Gemma Frisius Fund, KU Leuven and Spinventure. Staf Van Reet, former managing director and head of research at Janssen Pharmaceutica, has been proposed as chairman.

Okapi was founded by Johan Neyts, a member of the Rega Institute at the Faculty of Medicine at KU Leuven, with Stefaan Wera, founder and former CEO of the Leuven spin-off reMYND and Erwin Blomsma, former COO of the Dutch research firm Avantium Technologies.

The company will develop drugs for the treatment or prevention of viral infections in animals. At present, there are hardly any antivirals for animals and the market for veterinary drugs, especially for pets, is sizeable and is still growing every year.

Intellectual property rights have been transferred and licensed to the company by the universities of Leuven and Liège, the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences in Prague and by Professor G. Purstinger of the University of Innsbruck.

Okapi will collaborate with contract research firms and academic groups including the Rega Institute in Leuven, the Faculty of Veterinarian Medicine of the University of Liège and the Veterinary and Agrochemical Research Centre in Uccle.

Erwin Blomsma, CEO of Okapi Sciences said, “We are particularly delighted that we have been able to attract investors of this calibre and that, despite the current economic circumstances, we have managed to raise enough capital to cover the next three to four years. Thanks to the input of knowledge and intellectual property from various highly regarded research groups, we have a portfolio of products at an advanced stage of development, and the business can get off to a flying start.”

“As a start-up, Okapi Sciences is uniquely placed. A number of its products are already fairly close to commercialisation and are targeted at a still unexplored market with great potential,” said Harrold van Barlingen, founder and managing director of Thuja Capital.