Anaveon has received investment commitments of 110 million Swiss francs. According to information from the company, the transaction within the context of a Serie B funding round is to be concluded before the end of the year. With this, the immuno-oncology company plans to conduct several parallel phase II programs for its drug candidate ANV419, a “powerful and selective” interleukin-2 agonist for patients with solid tumors.
Additionally, Anaveon can use these funds to continue its work into developing successor products. This would expand the effectiveness of ANV419 to less immunogenic tumors. Furthermore, the company is developing its expertise in cytokine engineering with programs in the preclinical stage.
The funding round was led by the new investor Forbion. Founding investor Syncona and existing investor Novartis Venture Fund were also involved. Anaveon is said to be delighted to welcome Pontifax, Cowen Healthcare Investments, and Pfizer Ventures as investors and to the company. Representatives of the three last-mentioned companies will take a seat on the administrative board. The start-up funding for the company, which was founded in 2017, came from the biotech promoter BaseLaunch. In 2018, Anaveon raised seed financing from the University of Zurich’s Life Sciences fund and in 2019 completed a 36.5 million Dollar Series A from Syncona and Novartis Ventures.
Andreas Katopodis, Co-Founder and Chief Executive of Anaveon, which is based at Technologiepark Basel, comments: “With this fundraising we have made a clear statement about the scale and nature of our ambitions to bring cancer therapies rapidly to patients with a high unmet medical need, as well as leverage the experience of our in-house cytokine engineering experts to broaden our pipeline for the benefit of patients suffering from diseases with immune dysregulation pathologies.”
