BioGeneration, Wellington lead €30m series-A for Confo
A consortium of investors led by BioGeneration Ventures and Wellington Partners have participated in a €30m funding round for biotechnology company Confo Therapeutics.
The consortium includes new investors Fund+ and Perceptive Advisors, and existing investors Capricorn Health-Tech Fund, Qbic, Participatie Maatschappij Vlaanderen (PMV), the University of Michigan, V-Bio Ventures and VIB.
Wellington Partners is currently investing from its €78m vehicle Wellington Partners III Life Science Fund and its €85m vehicle Wellington Partners IV Life Science Fund. The firm invests €2-20m in healthcare companies.
Netherlands-based firm BioGeneration is using its Ventures III fund, which held a final close on €82m in 2017. The vehicle will make 15 investments in total.
Confo will use the fresh capital to accelerate the company's drug discovery activities and to develop its pipeline of G-protein coupled receptors modulating compounds.
Previous funding
Multi-sector, Belgium-focused investor Qbic fund, Capricorn Health-Tech Fund and Sofi invested €3m in the company in 2015.
University of Michigan, PMV, V-Bio Ventures and VIB joined the existing investors to participate in a €6.7m funding round in 2016. VIB and University of Michigan also made direct investments.
In 2017, the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders awarded the company €2.6m in non-dilutive funding.
Company
The company originated as a project at the life sciences research institute VIB-VUB Center for structural biology and was incorporated in 2015. The company develops drugs to target G-protein coupled receptors, which are involved in multiple diseases such as cancer, schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease. It also participates in revenue-generating drug discovery partnerships with Lundbeck and Roche. Confo is headquartered in Zwijnaarde and employs approximately 45 people.
People
Wellington Partners – Marianne Mertens (principal); Regina Hodits (managing partner).
Confo Therapeutics – Cedric Ververken (CEO).
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