Wellington invests €4m in €18.2m Genticel series-C

The Genticel investment was the first for the VC's Wellington Partners IV Life Science fund, which held its first close on €70m last September.

Existing shareholders including Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners (EdRip), Idinvest, CDC Enterprises' InnoBio fund, Institut Régional de Développement Industriel (IRDI) and Amundi Private Equity Funds invested the remaining €14.2m.

The new capital will allow Genticel to finance the phase II programme for its ProCervix project, a therapeutic vaccine for the treatment of human papillomavirus (HPV) in women, which is currently in development.

Wellington focuses its investments on the life sciences and technology sectors and seeks to invest up to €10m in funding rounds that range from €3m to €30m. The firm has offices in Munich, London and Zurich and currently has more than €800m under management.

Since inception in 1998, Wellington has invested in more than 100 companies. Previous investments include medical supplies business Sensimed last November and medical diagnostics company Oxford Immunotec last June.

Previous funding
In 2010, Idinvest (then AGF Private Equity) led a €13.1m series-B funding round for Genticel with first-time investors Amundi, IRDI and Innobio. EdRip also invested more capital in this round, having led a €2.8m series-A funding round for Genticel in 2008.

The series-A funding round saw previous investors Fonds d'Amorçage Midi-Pyrénées (FAM) – under Icso Private Equity management – BrevImmo, LBP, Beaufagne, Whitehall and Genticel's management team inject new capital into the vaccine developer.

Prior to this, Genticel received €6m of seed capital in 2006.

Company
Genticel, founded in 2001 as a spinout from the Institut Pasteur, operated under the name BT Pharma until 2010. The developer focuses on therapeutic vaccines and has sought funding to finance its ProCervix project, a vaccine against high-risk types of human papillomavirus (HPV) 16 and 18. These two high-risk strains of HPV carry the chance of infected women developing cervical cancer and account for 70% of all cervical cancer cases.

The company employs 30 staff and its headquarters and laboratories are based in Toulouse.

People
Benedikt Timmerman is the founder and CEO of Genticel. Dr Rainer Strohmenger, a general partner at Wellington, will join the company's supervisory board.

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