SWITZERLAND - Aravis & Wellington invest further CHF 16m in Evolva SA

The total figure for the round includes CHF 5m that was invested by India-based venture firm Ventureast Trustee Company Private Ltd in Evolva's Indian subsidiary, Evolva Biotech Private Ltd. New investor Entrepreneurs Fund and existing investors Novartis Bioventures, Dansk Innovation, Auriga Partners, BioMedInvest and Vinci Capital also participated in the funding.

As previously reported by unquote", the company completed a first closing for the funding round on CHF 28m in October.

This funding round enabled the company to progress its lead candidates and complete a merger with listed Arpida Ltd. Following the deal Evolva is now listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange as Evolva Holding SA. Newly issued shares in Evolva Holding SA will be subject to a lock-up agreement until 14 December 2010. The company did not raise any public money with the IPO.

Current shareholders of Arpida and Evolva received approximately one-third and two thirds, respectively, of the shares of the new company.

The company has previously received seed-stage funding from Symbion Capital and Vaekstfonden (now Sunstone Capital), who also participated in this round. In 2004, Aravis led a EUR 12m round for Evolva and was joined by Novartis Venture Fund, Yamanouchi Venture Capital (now Astellas) and Dansk Erhvervsinvestering. In 2005, new investor India's biotech fund APIDCVenture Capital provided EUR 2m in a final closing of Evolva's first round, with smaller participation from existing investors.

Arpida Ltd was a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Reinach, near Basel, with operations in Switzerland and the US. It focused on novel drugs that seek to overcome the growing problem of microbial resistance.

Allschwil-based Evolva uses its genetic chemistry platform to replicate, on an industrial basis, the ability of nature to create small molecules. Based on this technology, Evolva has a number of discovery and pre-clinical partnerships, which in 2008 generated revenues of about CHF 12m.

Founded in 2004, Evolva also has a pipeline of drug candidates deriving from this approach - one compound (for renal and cardiovascular diseases) entered Phase I at the beginning of 2009, and two others (an anti-fungal and an anti-viral) are expected to enter Phase I in 2010.

Currently, the company has 75 employees and offices in the US, Denmark and India.

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• DACH