BerGenBio secures further NOK 75m

Ellie Pullen
06 February 2014

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Norwegian oncology biopharma BerGenBio has raised a further NOK 75m (approximately $12.5m) from a syndicate of new and existing investors.

The company is backed by Investinor, Sarsia Seed and Birk Venture.

The capital injection comes just nine months after BerGenBio secured $6m (NOK 37.5m) in funding from Birk, Sarsia and Investinor in May last year. Investinor committed NOK 10m to the round, according to unquote" data.

The fresh capital will allow BerGenBio to further develop its portfolio of cancer therapeutics, specifically the clinical development of its BGB324 drug candidate currently in phase-Ib clinical studies. The data from the studies is expected to be made available in 2015.

The funding will also be used to further develop BerGenBio's drug candidate programmes for BGB109 and BGB201.

Previous funding
Prior to the $6m round in May last year, BerGenBio raised $8.8m in January 2012 from Investinor and Sarsia.

The company also secured a $1.1m seed investment in 2011, which is believed to have come from Sarsia.

Company
Bergen-headquartered BerGenBio spun out from University of Bergen in 2008. The company develops therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, which are designed to inhibit tumour epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). EMT is a natural cell programme that can produce cancer stem cell traits through the loss of gene expression patterns and the gain of mesenchymal cell traits in individual epithelial cells.

BerGenBio's BGB324 drug candidate is a selective AXL kinase inhibitor, designed to target AXL tyrosine kinase receptors. AXL tyrosine kinase receptors play an important role in EMT, which in turn leads to metastasis (the spread of cancer).

The candidate is currently being evaluated for signs of efficacy to target tumour EMT as a treatment for drug-resistant solid and haematological cancers (cancers that affect blood, bone marrow and lymph nodes), including non-small-cell lung cancer and acute myeloid leukaemia.

People
Richard Godfrey is the CEO of BerGenBio. The company's board of directors includes Investinor principal Jon Øyvind Eriksen, Telenor Venture managing partner and founder Rune Rinnan, Birk CEO Hans Ivar Robinson and Sarsia managing partner Sveinung Hole.