Gosselies, December 16th 2014 – ImmunXperts s.a. today announced it has successfully raised in excess of one million USD of seed financing.
The proceeds will be used by the new start-up, located in the life science cluster of Gosselies Charleroi - Belgium, for the development of proprietary and innovative methods to assess the immunogenicity of novel biotherapeutics and biosimilars. Immunogenicity is a known characteristic and side effect of biotherapeutics, where patients build an immune response against the drug they receive during their treatment. In most cases, this simply results in drug inactivity in the patient, but in some cases it causes adverse and severe side effects. As such, the “ex ante” risk assessment of drugs is part of any drug discovery project. This is the area where ImmunXperts will be providing its expertise, as service provider.
“ImmunXperts supports its partners in the evaluation of new drug candidates with a solid experimental platform for drug testing. Furthermore, we are driven by our customer oriented approach, as our ImmunAcademy provides specific training to our partners and supports them in setting up their own immunogenicity divisions” commented Sofie Pattijn, CTO of ImmunXperts.
From a financing perspective, the proceeds provided by the founders are complemented by additional and equally provided equity funds by Sambrinvest and Invest4Immune (i.e. a group of investors led by François Blondel and Philippe Janssens).
Philippe Stas, founder and director of ImmunXperts further commented: “We are delighted to receive the strong support from a group of very experienced investors. Moreover, the commitments by ING and WBC (Wallonia Biotech Coaching) have allowed a fast start of our new company”.
Contact:
Philippe Stas
info@immunxperts.com
About ImmunXperts
Founded in 2014 by Arno Kromminga, Sofie Pattijn and Philippe Stas, ImmunXperts provides immunogenicity screening, assessing the immunogenicity risk of biotherapeutics in patients, during the development cycle of the drug. Through its ImmunAcademy, the company supports biopharma companies to set up and build out immunogenicity screening tools. About Sambrinvest Sambrinvest Group is a venture capital fund active in the Charleroi/Thuin area. Its aim is to promote regional economic activity and employment creation. In biotech projects , it is active through a specific subsidiary, Sambrinvest spin-off/spin-out, with a specific focus on seed capital. It works closely with the Research Centers of the University of Brussels located in Gosselies. The main areas of expertise of these centers are: Cellular therapy, Immunology and Imaging. The fund has access to 25 M€ that can be invested in start ups and in sequential fund raisings. Currently, the portfolio of Sambrinvest already holds over 20 biotech start ups.
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