Cytura Therapeutics announces the successful closure of a Seed financing round.
Oss, the Netherlands – April 23, 2019 - Today Cytura Therapeutics announces the successful closure of a Seed financing round. The funding is provided by a syndicate led by Thuja Capital Healthcare (Seed) Fund II and includes BOM Brabant Ventures, the Centre for Drug Design and Discovery (CD3) – KU Leuven and the Gemma Frisius Fund. Cytura Therapeutics will use the new funding to advance its first proprietary small molecule program and to further expand their pipeline of new disruptive drugs, targeting genomic instability.
The company will be based at the Pivot Park Life Science Campus in Oss and collaborate with the Amsterdam UMC and the Centre for Drug Design and Discovery (CD3) of the KU Leuven. Genomic instability is a major problem in cancer progression and therapy resistance. By targeting genome instability this approach could be applied both as a stand-alone as in combinations therapy. On the latter, there is a large group of patients who will at first respond to the applied therapy and later on become resistant during treatment.
Ad van Gorp, co-founder of Cytura Therapeutics comments:
“One of the biggest issues in cancer treatment is that the disease has the ability to change its nature over time caused by the increasing genomic instability. Cytura’s R&D efforts are focused on the development of small molecules that will slow down or stop this genomic instability. I am committed to find this medicine which could lead to real advancements in the fight against cancer.”
Management and shareholders
Cytura Therapeutics is founded by Dr Ad van Gorp, former CEO of Dutch Lead Pharma, the Centre for Drug Design and Discovery (CD3) of the KU Leuven and Amsterdam UMC. In close collaboration with both organizations, Cytura Therapeutics aspires to advance it innovative first-in-class therapies targeting genomic instability of cancers.
About Thuja Capital
Thuja Capital manages several venture capital funds aimed at building and scaling companies in the fields of (bio)pharmaceuticals, medtech and digital health. Thuja aims to bring innovations to patients and society by providing capital to daring entrepreneurs with ground-breaking product concepts, addressing unmet medical needs. The investment team of Thuja consists of seasoned investors and entrepreneurs. Consistently performing in the top quartile, the team has backed and helped to build several of today’s unicorns.
For more information: www.thujacapital.com
About the Centre for Drug Design and Discovery (CD3) – KU Leuven
The Centre for Drug Design and Discovery (CD3) is an investment fund and drug translational platform with a focus on the discovery and development of new innovative small molecules based on excellent academic biomedical research. CD3 was set up in 2006 by KU Leuven Research & Development and the European Investment Fund (EIF) and launched a 60 million euro fund in 2016. Several of its programs have been successfully partnered to Pharma or incorporated in spin-offs.
For more information: www.cd3.eu
About BOM Brabant Ventures
The Brabant Development Agency (BOM) is a growth accelerator. With the help of its unique knowledge and capital, BOM uses the Brabant Ventures label to focus on the accelerated and future-proof growth of ambitious Brabant startups and scale-ups in the High-Tech Systems and Software, Agri-food, Life Sciences & Health, Maintenance, Supply Chain, and Bio-based Economy top industries.
For more information: www.bom.nl/brabant-ventures
About GFF
Gemma Frisius Fund (GFF) is a seed capital fund, established in 1997 as a joint venture between KU Leuven, KBC Private Equity and BNP Paribas Fortis Private Equity. It combines the research and technology transfer expertise of the university with the financial and investment expertise of the two financial partners. GFF provides seed capital in the early development phases of innovative, research-based spin-off companies originating from all technology domains and provides support in their further growth process. .
For more information: http://lrd.kuleuven.be/en/
For further inquiries:
Cytura Therapeutics B.V.
Ad van Gorp PhD, CEO
Kloosterstraat 9,
5349 AB, Oss
T: +31 6 12 43 25 26
E: advangorp@cyturatherapeutics.
For media:
LifeSpring LifeSciences Communication, Amsterdam
Léon Melens
T: +31 6 538 16 427
