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Life Sciences Partners (LSP). (12/11/17). "Press Release: LSP Leads EUR 27 mln Series A Financing of New VIB Start-up Aelin Therapeutics to Exploit Its Proprietary Pept-in Protein Knockdown Platform". Leuven.

	Organisation	Life Sciences Partners (LSP)
	Today	EQT Life Sciences
	Group	EQT (Wallenberg family) (Group)
	Organisation 2	Aelin Therapeutics (BE)
	Product	Pept-in™ protein knockdown technology
	Product 2	venture capital
	Index term	Aelin Therapeutics–SEVERAL: investment, 201712 financing round Series A €27m from LSP + PMV + Novartis Venture Fund + BIVF + Fund+
	Index term 2	Aelin Therapeutics–Life Sciences Partners: investment, 201712 financing round Series A totalling €27m incl lead investor LSP
	Person	de Koning, John (Life Sciences Partners 201603 Partner)

Aelin Therapeutics, a privately held Belgian biotherapeutics company, announces today that it has secured a EUR 27 million investment to pioneer a novel modality in drug development in order to create a completely new class of antibiotics and first-in-class therapeutics against high-value undruggable human targets. The technology, branded Pept-ins™, harnesses the power of protein aggregation to specifically induce functional knockdown of a target protein. The company will use the proceeds of the EUR 27 million Series A financing, to bring a first Pept-in product to the clinic.

Aelin Therapeutics is founded by VIB and its partner universities KU Leuven, VUB and UGent, based on the groundbreaking work of renowned structural biologists Prof. Joost Schymkowitz and Prof. Frederic Rousseau. The company is based on a very comprehensive preclinical Proof of Concept data package illustrating different applications of the technology such as in bacteria and cancer cells, but also in fungi, viruses and plant cells, with publications in high impact journals including Science. The Pept-in technology allows for the rational design of novel biotherapeutics and differentiates itself from any other therapeutic modality through its unique mode of action, its designability and intracellular target space out of reach for typical small molecule or antibody approaches.

Building on the solid science and a convincing data set, Aelin Therapeutics has succeeded in raising EUR 27 million, bringing together a strong group of well-reputed investors consisting of LSP (the Netherlands), PMV (Belgium), Novartis Venture Fund (Switzerland), Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (Germany) and Fund+ (Belgium). These resources enable the company to build on its platform capabilities and develop its first products until the end of initial clinical development.

Scientific publications:

> De novo design of a biologically active amyloid, Gallardo et al., Science 2016

> Protein aggregation as an antibiotic design strategy, Bednarska N et al., Molecular Microbiology 2016

A version of the company’s press release can be found here.

About LSP

LSP is an independent European investment firm, providing financing for private and public life sciences companies. LSP’s mission is to connect investors to inventors, focusing on unmet medical needs. Since the late 1980s, LSP’s management has invested in about 100 innovative enterprises, many of which have grown to become leaders of the global life sciences industry. With over EUR 1 billion of investment capital raised to date and offices in Amsterdam, Munich and Boston, LSP is one of Europe’s leading life sciences investors. For more information, please visit www.lspvc.com.

Contact:
Dr John de Koning
Partner LSP
+31 (0)20 664 5500
jdekoning@lspvc.com

Record changed: 2023-06-05