Axovan raises SFr30 million second round

Financing of the second round of venture capital for Axovan, a Basel-based drug discovery firm exploiting proteomics, counts Atlas Venture as lead investor.

Axovan AG announced that it has secured SFr30 million (€20.5 million) in second-round financing through a private placement led by Atlas Venture (UK).

New investors are Heidelberg Innovation (Germany), NeoMed (Norway), Banque Cantonale Vaudoise Private Equity, plus the previous round’s investors.

Axovan raised SFr8 million in June 2000 from Swiss investors New Medical Technologies (NMT), the venture arm of Roche, Venture Partners AG, and Genevest.

The company is working on the development of proprietary compounds to emerge with an attractive portfolio of products in several fields of medical application. The proceeds of this round will be used primarily to accelerate the development of new compounds from its G Protein-Coupled Receptor discovery platform.

Established two years ago, Axovan has established a functional drug discovery platform. It has filed its first patent, something important for this type of young pharmaceutical company.

There are a number of drug discovery firms that have proprietary technologies for researching proteomics based medicines and therapies, but Axovan, like the others, has to be able to develop a broad portfolio of high quality therapeutic candidates through clinical development to make it worthwhile for investors to reap rewards on their venture capital investments.

By Valerie Thompson