Anergis has closed a financing round totalling CHF8m which was fully subscribed by existing investors and directors and co-led by Sunstone Capital, BioMedInvest and Renaissance PME/Vinci Capital.
Anergis will use the proceeds to further advance the clinical development of its lead product AllerT, a vaccine to treat birch pollen allergy, and to advance two additional vaccine candidates against house dust mite and ragweed allergies.
For AllerT, the funds will specifically allow the preparation of Phase III trials and the conduct of a long-term efficacy follow-up trial of patients who participated in the recently completed field-based Phase II study. The results from this second follow-up season are expected to be available in the third quarter of 2014.
“Our investors have reconfirmed their confidence in our company, our technology platform and our lead allergy vaccine candidate AllerT,” says Vincent Charlon, CEO of Anergis. “With AllerT, we have already demonstrated the efficacy of our technology under conditions of natural allergen exposure, as required in pivotal trials designed for regulatory approval. We now look forward to advancing our next allergy vaccine candidates for patients with house dust mite and ragweed allergies.”
“We are very impressed by the recent Phase II results of Anergis’ lead compound AllerT,” says Jacques-François Martin, chairman of Anergis’ board of directors. "We believe that the company´s COP allergy vaccines may well become the next generation of allergy desensitization vaccines. We are particularly encouraged by the fact that immunology data collected in patients treated with AllerT showed persisting allergen-specific IgG4 elevations four seasons after completing an ultra-fast two-month treatment in our Phase I/IIa trial."
