Opsona
Therapeutics completed an €18 million, or $23 million, Series B
financing round. The money will allow the firm to expand its operations into Switzerland and advance its preclinical pipeline of drug candidates targeting
inflammatory diseases.
Novartis Venture Fund, Fountain Healthcare Partners, Inventages Venture Capital, and Seroba Kernel Life Sciences participated in the funding. Under the financing agreement, Opsona added Florent Gros, managing director at Novartis, and Manus Rogan, Ph.D., managing partner at Fountain Healthcare, to the board of directors. The company says other key appointments in the corporate and clinical areas will be announced in the coming months.
The Dublin-based company will open a new facility in Switzerland to carry out assay development and biochemical work to expand Opsona's pipeline of immunomodulators. The company's lead product is a fully humanized mAb to a TLR, which will start clinical trials in 2010, explains Opsona.