Naarden, The Netherlands – 17 April 2023 - Forbion, a leading European life sciences venture capital firm, today announces that it has co-led a €72 million Series A financing round in Complement Therapeutics GmbH (CTx). This financing round is a fast follow-on round to the initial €5M Series Seed which was co-led by Forbion and its joint venture partner BioGeneration Ventures (BGV) in February 2022.
Both Forbion and BGV are known for their company building capabilities, including those based on university or pharma spin-outs and completely de novo inception of new biotech companies. CTx was initially spun out of The University of Manchester by BGV, based on its innovative science, strong intellectual property and distinguished academic founders. It was then further built by Forbion and BGV together into a leading European biotech company focusing on complement-mediated diseases.
“We are delighted with the rapid progress made by Complement Therapeutics in the last twelve months. Patients impacted by complement-mediated diseases, such as macular degeneration, chronic renal disease and diseases of the neurological system, often have to cope with debilitating symptoms throughout their lifetime, and this can lead to a significant burden not only on them, but also their families. We look forward to continuing to support the company as it drives forward a pipeline of novel assets addressing these unmet needs in complement-mediated diseases” said Dr Dmitrij Hristodorov, Partner, Forbion.
“With a potentially highly differentiated lead asset combined with a precision medicine approach, we are excited by the opportunity to further develop CTx001 for the treatment of Geographic Atrophy through to the clinic.” said Dr Rafiq Hasan, CEO and Managing Director at Complement Therapeutics GmbH. “The support of Forbion and BGV now complemented by the new syndicate enables us to generate additional data demonstrating CTx001’s unique and differentiated mechanism of action, with the potential to transform the treatment landscape in geographic atrophy.”
With this new round of financing, CTx will continue the development and complete a Phase Ib clinical proof of concept of its lead product CTx001. CTx001 is a highly innovative AAV gene therapy for the treatment of Geographic Atrophy (GA) secondary to dry age-related macular degeneration (dry-AMD). Additionally, proceeds from this financing will be deployed to grow its laboratory-based activities in Stevenage (UK), evaluate CTx’s pipeline assets for non-ocular indications as well as further develop the novel Complement Precision Medicine (CPM) platform.
