The round was supported by an international syndicate of investors, led by Aravis Venture, a Swiss venture capital firm. Proquest Investments, a first tier US venture capital co-invested in its first investment in Europe. The round was further supported by a syndicate of investors, including BSI (Lugano, Switzerland), Nextech Venture (Zurich, Switzerland) and Generali Insurance Group (Italy).
The funds will enable Telormedix to advance its lead product TMX-101 in Phase I/II clinical trials in 2009, to develop its internal pipeline of ‘innate immunity’ second generation molecules and to expand its operations. Telormedix is working on a class of small molecules that can modulate the innate immune system and have shown preclinical and clinical activity in oncology indications, in autoimmune diseases and as vaccine adjuvants.
Jean-Philippe Tripet, managing partner of Aravis, and Alain Schreiber, managing partner of Proquest Investments will serve on the board of directors. Stuart Holden, the director of the Louis Warschaw Prostate Cancer Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Los Angeles, US) will also join as director. Thomas Hecht, former head of medical affairs and vice president of marketing at Amgen Europe will serve as chairman.
Lorenzo Leoni, CEO of Telormedix, said: “We are delighted to have received this strong support from investors that validated our business vision. The size of our Series A financing will allow us to move forward our pipeline of second generation molecules that have shown impressive activity in preclinical models for a variety of immune-related diseases.”