High-Tech Gründerfonds, Germany’s state venture fund which has backing from multiple corporates, has helped T-Cell Europe, a Germany-based cell therapy spin-off of the Berlin-Brandenburg Center for Regenerative Therapies, raise €1.45m ($1.8m) on May 15.
High-Tech Gründerfonds was joined by venture firm Constantin Bastian Leander Venture Capital and the Brandenburg state development bank (ILB) backing the company.
The company has been dedicated since its founding in 2010 to the development and commercialisation of cell-based therapies. The Berlin-Brandenburg Center for Regenerative Therapies, is a joint centre of the Charité University Medical Center in Berlin and the Helmholtz Center in Geesthacht.
T-Cell’s first planned product is designed to make kidney transplants safer.
Caroline Fichtner, senior investment manager at High-Tech Gründerfonds, said: "The technology from t-cell addresses a billion-euro market with clear medical needs. With no T-cell-based product currently on the market, the company’s development activities are of interest, particularly for large biopharmaceutical companies who wish to broaden their product pipelines. The future value of this innovative product will, for this reason, clearly be driven by the demand of the pharmaceutical industry for cell-based therapies. The broad potential for applications in connection with a patent-protected technology was, in the final evaluation, critical to our decision to invest in this financing round."
Separately on May 14 Germany-based bank KfW and High-Tech Gründerfonds invested €4.3m in Algiax Pharmaceuticals as part of a consortium.
Martin Pfister, investment manager at High-Tech Gründerfonds, said: "We are happy that Algiax’s well-stocked seed round will enable the development of a preclinical program for a thus far inadequate treated indication with high medical need."
Detlev Riesner, lead investor for KfW, said Algiax’s "excellent science in combination with experienced management and high market potential come together in a perfect way."