Sep 19, 2019

Lophius Biosciences Closes Financing Round To Set New Standard In Tuberculosis Diagnosis ) Lophius Biosciences GmbH today announced that the company has closed a financing round of €3.1m led by VRD GmbH, supported by the Bavarian Growth Fund (“Wachstumsfonds Bayern”) of Bayern Kapital GmbH and private investors. The company will use the funds to expand clinical performance data, finalize design optimization and establish the blood-based tuberculosis (TB) infection detection assay on broadly used RT-qPCR automation platforms to enable fast market penetration. Broad clinical validation studies for market approval are planned to be initiated in the second half of 2020. Lophius recently achieved an important clinical development milestone for its proprietary, blood-based multi-marker tuberculosis infection detection assay comparing active and latent TB patients to non-infected control subjects: The Lophius solution exceeded predefined performance goals. In particular, it clearly outperformed the benchmark Interferon Gamma Release Assay (IGRA) by correctly classifying more than 95% of patients with active TB disease as infected. In addition, the Lophius solution correctly classified as infected sputum smear-negative active TB cases missed by conventional PCR, showing the potential to complement direct pathogen detection by PCR. “We are excited that these additional funds enable us to continue our program for establishing a new standard in TB diagnosis. The achieved high performance level of our blood-based solution allows the early identification of TB in the diagnostic workflow with the potential to significantly improve patient management and to save healthcare costs. In addition, our expertise and strong network provide us with a solid basis to further advance in our breakthrough program: A solution to consistently differentiate between latent tuberculosis and treatment-requiring active TB,” commented Bernd Merkl, CEO of Lophius Biosciences. About Bayern Kapital Bayern Kapital GmbH, based in Landshut, was founded on the initiative of the Bavarian government in 1995. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Bavarian LfA Förderbank. As the venture capital organization of the Land of Bavaria, Bayern Kapital provides equity capital financing for the founders of young innovative technology companies in Bavaria. Presently Bayern Kapital manages eleven investment funds with a total volume of around €325m. So far, it has invested almost €300m in 270 innovative companies in the fields of technology in various sectors including life science, software & IT, medical technology, materials and new materials, nanotechnology and environmental technology. In this way, more than 7500 long-term jobs in sustainable companies have been created in Bavaria. Website Promotion Lophius Biosciences GmbH Lophius Biosciences’ mission is to transform treatment paradigms and patient management with novel molecular diagnostic solutions for life threatening and highly-contagious infectious diseases. The core program addresses an unmet clinical need in tuberculosis (TB), a global epidemic affecting hundreds of millions of people. Lophius has developed a proprietary blood-based multi-marker solution, run on widely available platforms, to deliver a significant improvement on TB infection detection over existing approaches. Lophius is advancing biomarker combinations which would disrupt the field by being able to differentiate between active TB disease and latent TB infection. In addition, the company is commercializing a clinically validated CE-marked diagnostic kit to individualize transplant patient management by personalized CMV disease risk stratification. Das könnte Sie auch interessieren 07.05.2019