ATS buys majority stake in Ganymed

Majority sale

Ganymed, founded in 2001 as a spin-out from the Universities of Mainz and Zürich, today announced the sale of a majority of the shares in the company to ATS Beteilingungsverwaltung GmbH. The shares sold to ATS were those formerly held by Ingro Finanz, KfW, Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg, Nextech Venture, Varuma, VI Partners, WFT and a number of private investors from Switzerland and Germany.

GANYMED is at the same time expanding its pipeline to include five further antibody projects in development for breast, colorectal, lung, pancreatic and prostate and cancers, as well as for other solid tumors with high medical need and large market potential. This is in addition to Ganymed’s lead antibody, iMAB362, which will enter a clinical trial for metastatic gastro-esophageal carcinoma in Q4 2008.

“Together with ATS, Ganymed is pursuing a long-term development strategy and a substantial expansion of our antibody pipeline to include a broad portfolio of development candidates for the treatment of solid cancers,” said founder and CSO Dr Özlem Türeci.

“Over the last year we have been very impressed with Ganymed’s exceptional team, who are, together with a very promising pipeline, the justification for our long-term confidence in Ganymed. We see this offer as a logical step to further expand the large developmental potential of Ganymed and set the Company upon a solid basis,” said Helmut Jeggle, spokesperson for ATS.

“We are very proud of what has been achieved with the syndicate of early investors’ financial, strategic and operational support together with the Ganymed team over a period of otherwise economically difficult years,” said Dr Alfred Scheidegger, founding partner of Nextech Venture.

From its foundation until the start of clinical development, Ganymed was supported by the selling investors, under the lead of Nextech Venture, through three financing rounds.