Cytheris raises second round for IL-7 Phase II trials

Second-round closure

The French immunotherapeutics specialist Cytheris has raised €24.3 million in a second round financing to move the clinical development programme for its lead product, IL-7, into Phase II in the US and France, and enabling the company to complete the preclinical development of a further drug candidate.

Cytheris attracted two new investors in this round, CDC Entreprises Innovation, France, which led the round, and ABN AMRO Capital Life Sciences, of the Netherlands. Existing French investors AXA Private Equity, Bioam and Crédit Agricole Private Equity followed on, as did T2C2/Bio 2000 and Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec, both of Canada.

"This financing demonstrates our investors' confidence in Cytheris' approach to developing novel agents to support and enhance therapeutic immune responses for life-threatening conditions such as HIV/HCV infections and cancer," said Michel Morre, CEO of Cytheris.

Morre added that since its formation, Cytheris has focused its development on very few projects with high probability of success and blockbuster potential. “More than 50 patients treated in various proof of concept studies in US and France confirm IL-7’s excellent clinical tolerance and impressive activity. Our understanding is that most active or passive immunotherapies for life threatening diseases will need the indispensable support of IL-7 to make a large number of T lymphocytes available for therapeutic responses."

Jean-Christophe Renondin, general partner at CDC Entreprises said, “The company's drug candidates are based on excellent science with large broad applicability in chronic viral infections such as HCV and HIV, and cancer. Cytheris' lead programme, IL-7, has the potential to make a breakthrough in those diseases."

Cytheris, based in Paris, is focused on the development of new agents for immune modulation. The lead compound, recombinant Interleukin-7, is a growth factor for T cells. The company has a second family of products based on NKT ligands in-licensed from New York University, the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the City University of New York.