Action Pharma A/S (Denmark) - Jan 2008

unquote
01 January 2008

Tweet
Facebook
LinkedIn
Google plus
Send to

Action Pharma A/S, a Danish biotech company, has raised €15m from new and existing investors. New investors Global Life Science Ventures invested €5m and Scandinavian Life Science Venture (SLS) invested €3m. The commitments of €8m from the two new investors corresponds to a 22% stake in the business. Existing investors InnovationsKapital, Sunstone Capital and Inventure Capital invested the remaining €7m. The venture round will enable Action Pharma to further develop its pipeline of drug candidates. SLS Venture has followed the business since its inception, but decided not to participate in previous rounds due to the risk associated with investing in a drug discovery company before clinical trials have been initiated. The investor felt the timing was right to contribute in this round since the company has showed strong progress in the clinical trials of especially the diabetes type 2 drug. The venture capitalist believes the drug to have a global market potential and the management possess the ability to take the business to an international level. An IPO is the favoured potential exit route for the business. Action Pharma has previously received two funding rounds of €13m in total. InnovationsKapital, Growth Foundation (now Sunstone Capital) and INCUBA Venture participated in a €6m funding round at the beginning of 2007 (January 2007, page 29). The business is now fully funded until mid-2009.

Company

The biotech company is in the process of discovering and developing drugs for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and other diseases. It currently has a pipeline of seven drug candidates that are in different stages of development. The business strategy is to commercialise them after clinical development phase I or II by partnering with major biotech and pharmaceutical companies. It was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Holte outside Copenhagen.

People

Henrik Lawaetz, managing director, of SLS Venture has joined the board of directors together with Kuno Jung, principal of Global Life Science Partners. Søren Nielsen is the CEO. Uli Hacksell, CEO of Acadia in San Diego, is chairman of the board.

Advisers

Equity - Nielsen & Nørager, Morten Eldrup-Jørgensen (Legal)Equity - Vossius & Partner Patentanwälte, Joachim Wachenfeld (Other Due Diligence)

Sourced from: Nordic unquote" 70 (Feb 2008)