The Norwegian cardiovascular biopharma company Serodus said today it will acquire Danish peptide specialist Phlogo and its assets following an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders held Monday.

According to a summary of the meeting posted on Serodus’ website, Serodus shareholders authorized paying for the acquisition by issuing to Phlogo shareholders two million new shares at a nominal value of NOK 1.30 (21 cents), for a total NOK 2.6 million ($424,292).

The acquisition expands Serodus’ pipeline with two first-in-class drug candidates. Serodus said the combined company will pursue development of SER130 and SER 140, both Phlogo preclinical peptides. Phlogo was established in 2008 by two researchers who spun out the company from the University of Copenhagen.

SER130 is an IL-4 partial receptor agonist for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) that will “shortly” enter preclinical development, Serodus said, after being proven to inhibit inflammation in experimental inflammatory in vivo models. SER140 is an IL-1 receptor antagonist for type 2 diabetes, which inhibits liberation of TNFα in cells stimulated in an inflammatory cascade.

“Phlogo has generated very interesting data on both compounds, but we were in a position where the company needed additional resources to continue the development. We are confident that Serodus can bring these projects forward,” Phlogo CEO Torben Skarsfeldt said in a statement.

Skarsfeldt was named Phlogo CEO in March, succeeding Eva Steiness, who is now Serodus’ chairman and CEO.

Because diabetes falls outside the main cardiovascular focus of Serodus’ drug development effort, “we will therefore be seeking a partner to continue its development,” Steiness said in the statement.

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