Cowen Healthcare in €47m extension round for AM-Pharma

The round includes €23m in equity, mainly deployed by US-based Cowen Healthcare Investments.

It also comprises a €24m finance facility provided by the European Investment Bank (EIB), via the InnovFin infectious diseases finance facility, which supports companies developing innovative vaccines, drugs and diagnostic devices, and is part of the EU's research and innovation Horizon 2020 programme.

This new investment follows a €116m round led by LSP and Andera Partners in July 2019, and brings the total capital raised by the company to €163m to support a phase-III trial for its recombinant human alkaline phosphatase (recAP).

This multi-national pivotal trial will include 1,400 patients with sepsis-associated acute kidney injury (SA-AKI) in 12 countries worldwide.

The fresh financing will also allow the company to fund the steps required to submit marketing authorisation applications following the trial's completion, including CMC validation and commercial manufacture.

Previous funding
AM-Pharma completed a first financing round in 2001, gathering a total of €640,000 from management, private investors and BioPartner Startup Ventures, a venture fund supported by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Inventages and ABN Amro Life Sciences Capital provided the company with €6m and €3m respectively in 2005.

Forbion and Inventages contributed €2.5m to the biotech in 2007 and injected €7m in 2008. At the time, AM-Pharma was making preparations for a potential IPO, and Forbion owned a large minority stake in the company.

Subsequently, Ysios Capital, Kurma Life Sciences Partners (KLS), BB Biotech Ventures, Forbion, Idinvest Partners and Inventages Venture Capital invested €29.2m in the business in 2011. Ysios and KLS led the round, with the former contributing €4.5m in capital.

Gilde Healthcare led a €12.2m funding round for AM-Pharma in 2014. Existing backers AbbVie, BB Biotech, Idinvest, Inventages, KLS (via the Kurma Biofund) and Ysios also took part in the round.

More recently, LSP and Andera Partners led a €116m round for the company in July 2019. Previous backers Forbion, Ysios, KLS, Idinvest, BB Pureos Bioventures and Gilde Healthcare also took part in the round.

Company
Established in 2001 and headquartered in Bunnik, AM-Pharma is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing treatment for SA-AKI.

Its proprietary alkaline phosphatase recAP is a recombinant human protein that removes phosphate from extracellular substrates, reducing local and systemic inflammation and protecting kidneys against further damage.

AKI involves inflammatory processes in the kidney that can lead to complete loss of renal function. It affects millions of patients worldwide, without any approved pharmacological treatments.

People
AM-Pharma – Erik van den Berg (CEO).  
Cowen Healthcare Investments – Tim Anderson (partner).

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• Topics
• Early-stage
• Benelux
• Healthcare
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