NETRIS Pharma, a French clinical-stage biopharmaceutical startup, which develops next-gen molecules targeting cancer resistance has raised a €7.5 million extension round. With this, the ongoing Series A round reaches €24.4 million. The fresh investment comes from new investors, including the EIC Fund, which invested in Dronamics and Nevomo. This follows the selection for the EIC accelerator program.
The proceeds of this investment will be used to reach all endpoints of its clinical development plan and for corporate development purposes. NETRIS Pharma is evaluating the efficacy of anti-netrin-1 antibody candidate NP137 in combination with Atezo-bev NP137 in five clinical trials in combination with chemotherapies or immunotherapies.
New appointees to its board
Besides this funding, the executive team has been strengthened with the appointment of Fabien Sebille as Chief Business Officer. Fabien will lead the business development activities for NETRIS Pharma, leveraging his experience in executive positions within private and public oncology biotech companies as well as his track record in both sell-side and buy-side transactions.
Also, Gabriela Gruia has been nominated to its Board of Directors. She has held many leadership positions within pharmaceutical companies, and more recently was Senior Vice President and Head of Regulatory Affairs Oncology at Novartis, based in the US.
Develops therapeutic molecules to treat cancer
NETRIS Pharma was founded in 2008 by Patrick Mehlen and Agnes Bernet in Lyon. The company is focused on delivering superior clinical benefits to patients not responding well to anti-proliferative therapies. It provides safer treatments to patients by developing new drugs targeting moieties that are only expressed by the tumour.
It provides novel therapeutic solutions to patients suffering from cancer. Its drugs effectively restore cancer cell death, limit cancer cell plasticity, and alleviate resistance to current antiproliferative treatments such as chemotherapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy.
Christophe Guichard, NETRIS Pharma Chief Financial Officer, commented: “NETRIS Pharma continues to deliver on its overall development plan despite challenging times for biotech fundraising. This funding extension reflects the strong impact of the recent back-to-back publications in Nature® highlighting the promising mode of action of our lead product NP137 and will take us to significant value inflexion points in the next 12 months from our five ongoing proof-of-concept clinical trials.”
“The recruitment of Fabien is a further step in NETRIS Pharma’s growth in advance of the multiple clinical readouts expected in the coming months. We look forward to working together in raising the profile of the company and strengthening our relationships with pharmaceutical companies and other strategic partners,” noted Patrick Mehlen, Chief Executive Officer of NETRIS Pharma.
Jean-Pierre Bizzari, Chairman of the Board of Directors, commented: “This successful fundraising is a further demonstration of the progress NETRIS Pharma has achieved and the promise of its clinical development pipeline. On behalf of the Board, I’d like to welcome Gabriela to the Company. Gabriela brings a wealth of regulatory experience with an outstanding track record of overseeing the regulatory approval process for 12 NMEs in oncology. I look forward to further complementing our Board of Directors with additional leading individuals from the pharma industry to help guide NETRIS as we continue our rapid progress.”
