Omnes injects €3m into Opsona

The fresh funds from Omnes bring the total amount raised by the company in its series-C to €36m.

The total proceeds from the series-C will be used by Opsona to finance a three-part, placebo-controlled clinical trial to evaluate the safety, tolerability and efficacy of its OPN-305 product in kidney transplant patients at high risk of delayed graft function (DGF), which happens immediately after surgery and means the patient's new kidney is not functioning correctly.

Previous funding
Opsona held the first close of its series-C round in April, having raised €33m from a consortium of new and existing investors. Previous backers that took part in the round were Novartis Venture Fund, Fountain Healthcare Partners, Roche Venture Fund and Seroba Kernel Life Sciences. New investors comprised BB Biotech Ventures, Sunstone Capital, Baxter Ventures, Amgen Ventures and EMBL Ventures. BB Biotech and Novartis led the round.

In 2009, Opsona raised a total of €21.3m in a two-part series-B funding round. The developer originally closed the round on €18m in February 2009, having received new backing from Novartis and Fountain, and additional backing from previous investors Inventages Venture Capital and Seroba Kernel Life Sciences. In May of the same year, however, Roche and Enterprise Ireland committed a further €3.3m to the round.

Prior to this, Opsona received €6.6m in a series-A round which saw Inventages, Seroba BioVentures, Genentech Inc and Enterprise Ireland invest in the development company.

Company
Opsona develops drugs targeting the innate immune system, which immediately defends the body from infection, but responds to pathogens in a generic way and does not adapt to give a human long-lasting protection from infection.

The company is currently in Phase II of a clinical trial for its OPN-305 product, an antibody which targets a receptor in the body called Toll-like-receptor-2 (TLR-2). TLR-2 recognises foreign substances and passes signals to the cells in the body's immune system.

The immune system is associated with several major human diseases, including cancer, diabetes, inflammatory diseases, transplant rejection, Alzheimer's and atherosclerosis, a condition in which artery walls become clogged with fatty deposits such as cholesterol.

Opsona was founded in 2004 by three immunologists at Trinity College in Dublin: Luke O'Neill, Kingston Mills and Dermot Kelleher. The company employs around 20 staff.

People
Martin Welschof is the CEO of Opsona. Only one of the three founders, namely Luke O'Neill, still remains with the firm as a director. Omnes life sciences director Bruno Montanari led the deal for the firm.

Several of the company's venture capital backers are represented on Opsona's board of directors. Currently, the board comprises Seroba partner Jonathan Hepple; Novartis managing director Florent Gros; Fountain Healthcare managing partner Manus Rogan; BB Biotech partner Martin Muenchbach; Sunstone investment director Magnus Corfitzen; and Baxter head Geeta Vemuri.

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