Kiadis Pharma Raises €15 million to Advance Oncology Pipeline
(NL version) | go backAmsterdam, June 26, 2007 – Oncology product development company Kiadis Pharma announced today that it has completed a €15 million private financing round. Alta Partners, a prominent life science venture capital company based in San Francisco, led the financing round.
Other major new investors include Quest for Growth and MedSciences Capital. All of the major existing investors also contributed to this round, including founding investor Life Sciences Partners, Esprit Capital Partners LLP and N.V. NOM (Investment and Development Agency for the Northern Netherlands).
The Kiadis Pharma product pipeline is focused on providing novel treatments for significant unmet medical needs in the field of bone marrow transplants and the treatment of aggressive cancers. The four most advanced products are currently in clinical trials, ranging from Phase I to entering Phase III. Kiadis Pharma’s lead product is ATIR, which enables the use of mismatched bone-marrow donors in transplantations for terminally ill blood cancer patients. Kiadis Pharma is a Dutch company with locations in The Netherlands and Canada.
Ekaterina Smirnyagina, of Alta Partners, joining the Supervisory Board of Kiadis, added: "We were impressed by the broad endorsement of Kiadis’ clinical programs within the international scientific community. Its lead product, ATIR, is being tested by opinion leaders in the field as a potentially life-saving treatment option for patients unable to find a matched bone-marrow donor, while also preventing graft-versus-host disease (GvHD). We look forward to working with the seasoned management of Kiadis and its investors on building a premier oncology company”.
Mark Wegter, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Kiadis Pharma and General Partner at LSP, commented: “Following the acquisition of Celmed late last year, this is yet again a key milestone that has been achieved by the company and its management. It marks the next step in the further growth of Kiadis Pharma which we feel is positioned to become a major force in the European biotech arena. We are very pleased to see our excitement about the company being shared by other high quality US and European investors”
Manja Bouman, CEO, Kiadis Pharma, stated- “We are delighted by this latest funding round. Our shareholders provide a particularly strong knowledge base with an excellent track record in life sciences. Bringing in Alta Partners as our lead investor is an important external validation. Not only does it confirm the potential of many of our clinical trials, but it also demonstrates the overall confidence of sophisticated investors in our novel treatments.”
She added: “Earlier this year we announced the trial of our ATIR product on nine end-stage blood cancer patients who were transplanted in the mismatched setting with the use of ATIR. All patients responded well. This treatment is at a very exciting stage in its development and this trial was an important milestone in our revolutionary approach to providing successful mismatch transplants for end stage blood cancer patients.”
