Aquilo et al. invest $55.8m in Merus

Francesca Veronesi
16 February 2018

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A consortium of private equity firms and corporates have bought 3.1 million shares in Dutch clinical-stage immuno-oncology company Merus.

Value Fund, Aquilo Capital Management, Sofinnova Venture Partners, and LSP Life Sciences Fund all bought shares.

Merus anticipates aggregate gross proceeds from the offering will be approximately $55.8m based on the offering price of $18 per share, representing a premium of approximately 9% from the close of trading on 13 February 2018.

Merus intends to use the proceeds from this private placement to continue to fund its product candidates in clinical and pre-clinical development, as well as for general corporate purposes.

Previous funding
Aglaia Biomedical Ventures was the first investor to back Merus in its series-A round in February 2006.

Merus has previously received €47.6m in a series-B funding, composed of a first round in 2010 and an extension amounting to €31m in 2013. Backers of the series-B funding included Novartis Venture Fund, Pfizer Venture Investments (PVI), Bay City Capital, Life Sciences Partners (LSP), Aglaia and Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation (JJDC).

A series-C round of funding was organised in 2015. The round saw €72.8m invested by new backers Sofinnova, Novo Ventures, the venture arm of Denmark's Novo pharmaceutical company, VC firms RA Capital Healthcare Fund, Rock Springs Capital, Tekla Capital Management and another US life sciences-focused investor. Historical investors Novartis Venture Fund, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Pfizer, Bay City, LSP and Aglaia also contributed to the round.

Merus announced its IPO in May 2016, listing 5.5 million shares at $10 per share.

Company
Merus is a clinical-stage immuno-oncology company developing antibody therapeutics with the goal of treating and potentially curing cancer patients. They are manufactured using industry standard processes and have been observed in pre-clinical and clinical studies to have several of the same features of conventional human monoclonal antibodies, such as long half-life and low immunogenicity. Since 2006 the company has had several candidate drugs in clinical trials.

Merus is based in the Netherlands and the US, and is headquartered in Utrecht.

People
Merus – Ton Logtenberg (founder, CEO).