CryoTherapeutics GmbH Completes An Extension To Its Series A Financing Round Bringing The Total To EUR 6.5 Million

COLOGNE, GERMANY--(Marketwired - May 06, 2014) - CryoTherapeutics GmbH (CryoTherapeutics), the developer of a proprietary cryotherapy system for use in the treatment of coronary artery disease, announced today that it has completed an extension to its Series A financing round led by Peppermint Venture Partners (PVP) via its Charité Biomedical Fund with participation by existing investors NRW.BANK, Rainer Christine Asset Management GmbH, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and Getz Brothers. New investor KfW also participated in the financing.

CryoTherapeutics was established in December 2009 in Germany by a team of experienced serial entrepreneurs and is focusing on developing a novel catheter system, which utilizes cryoenergy to treat and prevent heart attacks. The initial objective of the Company is the demonstration of the clinical benefit in the treatment of heart attack patients using this catheter-based system that will be utilized by interventional cardiologists.

Maurice Buchbinder MD, Chief Medical Officer of CryoTherapeutics, stated, “Given the potential anti-inflammatory effect of cryoenergy in the vascular space, particularly when applied to ruptured plaque in the setting of heart attack, catheter-based cryotherapy may stabilize the culprit lesion promoting optimal healing with restoration of vascular function within days. This critical restoration may reduce the dependence on adjunctive pharmacotherapy, allow vasomotility and perhaps reduce recurrent events.”

John Yianni PhD, Managing Director, commented, “We are delighted to announce this extension of our Series A financing which enables CryoTherapeutics to continue the development of our cryosystem for demonstrating the safety of this new treatment option for heart attack patients in a first-in-man study.”

Joachim Rautter PhD, Managing Partner of PVP, stated, “We are very pleased to continue to support this exciting technology with a substantial injection of additional funding to allow the Company to accelerate its development programmes to achieve initial clinical validation for its cryotherapy technology. We believe the field of interventional cardiology will benefit from therapeutic technologies that do not require implantation of foreign materials inside coronary arteries and we are very excited by the prospect that CryoTherapeutics’ technology can potentially offer for the treatment of atherosclerotic plaque.”

About CryoTherapeutics GmbH: The focus of the company is the development, demonstration of clinical benefit, and commercialization of cryotherapy systems for the treatment of coronary artery plaque.

About Peppermint VenturePartners: PVP is a Berlin-based venture capital company investing in young healthcare companies with a focus on medical devices, mainly within Europe, that have successfully demonstrated a first proof-of-concept for their technology, product or services. At the end of 2010 PVP, in association with the Charité Foundation, launched the new Charité Biomedical Fund (CBF). In the framework of its established collaboration with the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, PVP has access to the proprietary network and evaluation platform of one of the largest medical schools in Europe and to its international partners. PVP currently manages funds exceeding EUR 50 million.

About High-Tech Gruenderfonds
High-Tech Gruenderfonds invests in young, high potential high-tech start-ups. The seed financing provided is designed to enable start-ups to take an idea through prototyping and to market launch. Typically, High-Tech Gruenderfonds invests EUR 500,000 in the seed stage, with the potential for up to a total of EUR 2 million per portfolio company in follow-on financing. Investors in this public/private partnership include the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy, the KfW Banking Group, as well as strategic corporate investors including ALTANA, BASF, Bayer, B. Braun, Robert Bosch, CEWE, Daimler, Deutsche Post DHL, Deutsche Telekom, Evonik, Lanxess, media + more venture Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG, METRO, Qiagen, RWE Innogy, SAP, Tengelmann and Carl Zeiss. High-Tech Gruenderfonds has about EUR 576 million under management in two funds (EUR 272 million HTGF I, EUR 304 million HTGF II).