Covagen, an ETH Zurich spin-out company pioneering the development of a novel class of protein therapeutics called Fynomers, announced the closing of a CHF 6.3 million (€4.79 million) funding round led by new investor Seroba Kernel Life Sciences based in Dublin, Ireland.
The existing investors Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners, MP Healthcare Venture Management, Inc, Novartis Venture Fund, and Ventech followed on.
Covagen’s Chief Executive Officer Julian Bertschinger said, “We are very pleased that we could attract an additional internationally renowned venture firm to invest into Covagen. The funding provided by Seroba Kernel and our other investors validates the interest in our Fynomer technology and will allow us to progress quickly towards generating key proof of principle data for our lead drug candidate.”
Jonathan Hepple, Partner at Seroba Kernel, who will join Covagen’s board, said the firm believes Fynomer technology, “Can address many of the limitations of current biologics and provide new therapeutic approaches to the treatment of cancer and autoimmune disorders.”
Covagen’s platform technology can be used to generate single domain protein scaffolds, which can be engineered to yield high affinity binding proteins or Fynomers. The possibility to create bi-specific and multivalent Fynomers that can lock on to two different targets simultaneously, and which have favourable biophysical properties, opens up new therapeutic potential.
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