Redmile leads €50m series-C for PE-backed Aprea

New investor Rock Spring Capital and existing shareholders Karolinska Development, 5AM Ventures, Versant Ventures, HealthCap and Sectoral Asset Management also took part in the round.

A representative from Redmile will be appointed as director to the company's board to support the management in the new phase of expansion.

Proceeds from the financing will be used to advance the clinical development of Aprea's drug candidate APR-246, according to a statement.

Previous funding
Aprea raised a SEK 25m series-A founding round led by Industrifonden in December 2007. Karolinska Development, Praktikerinvest and Östersjöstiftelsen also participated in the investment.

In July 2009, Karolinska provided an additional SEK 8.1m of funding to Aprea. Subsequently, in September 2011, Karolinska, Industrifonden, Östersjöstiftelsen and Praktikerinvest deployed SEK 20.4m to advance the programme of Aprea's drug candidate APR246.

In August 2012, Karolinska deployed SEK 72.6m to reach a 69.4% holding in the company through a share swap with Industrifonden, which divested all its shares in Aprea. The company was valued at SEK 220m at the time, according to Unquote data.

Karolinska, Östersjöstiftelsen and KCIF Co–Investment Fund, provided an additional round of funding to Aprea in 2013.

More recently, the company raised a €46m series-B founding round co-led by Versant and 5AM in March 2016. The investment also saw the participation of Sectoral Asset Management, HealthCap and previous backer Karolinska.

Karolinska, which has ties with Swedish university Karolinska Institutet, converted SEK 60m of existing outstanding loans to Aprea into equity, resulting in the investor holding a 19% stake in the company. KDev Investments (Karolinska's joint-investment vehicle with Rosetta Capital) and the KCIF Co-Investment Fund became the majority shareholder in Aprea post-investment.

Company
Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, and Boston, US, Aprea is a clinical-stage biotechnology company that specialises in developing anti-cancer therapies targeting the p53 tumour suppressor protein.

The company's lead drug candidate is APR-246, a first-in-class small molecule in clinical development for myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and high-grade serious ovarian cancer. Aprea is also developing second generation p53 reactivators.

People
Karolinska Development – Viktor Drvota (CEO).
Aprea Therapeutics – Christian Schade (CEO, president).

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