AAA Opsona cracks open C round

Opsona cracks open C round

Opsona Therapeutics, an Ireland-based immune drug development company, has raised €33m ($50m) in its series C round from a consortium including multiple corporate venturing units led by Novartis.

Novartis Venture Fund and Roche Venture Fund, the corporate venturing units of the eponymous Switzerland-based drugs companies, reinvested in Opsona, while US-based peers Baxter Ventures, which is also posting a representative to Opsona’s board, and Amgen Ventures joined the C round as new investors.

Other investors included venture capital firms Fountain Healthcare Partners, Seroba Kernel Life Sciences, BB Biotech Ventures, Sunstone Capital and EMBL Ventures, a €68m asset manager focused on spin-outs from European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and its technology transfer organization EMBL Enterprise Management Technology Transfer.

BB Biotech Ventures, a fund advised by Swiss investment bank Bellevue Group, and Novartis Venture Fund led the C round.

In May 2009, Roche and state investment fund Enterprise Ireland invested €3.3m in Opsona to take its B round to €21.3m – the consortium at that time had also included chocolate maker Nestle’s corporate venturing unit, Inventages.

The A round closed in February 2005 at €6.6m co-led by Inventages and Seroba with co-investors Roche-owned biotech Genentech, and Enterprise Ireland. 

Martin Welschof, chief executive of Opsona since February last year, said: 

“With their repeat investment, our existing investors have clearly indicated their long-term commitment to Opsona, while the new investment from BB Biotech Ventures, Sunstone Capital, Baxter Ventures, Amgen Ventures and EMBL Ventures is a further endorsement of Opsona’s future potential.”

Opsona’s
three scientific founders are professors at Trinity College Dublin.

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