Advertisement
Herantis Pharma raises 5.8 million EUR

The Finnish biotech company has announced a positive outcome of a directed share issue, gaining additional support from long-term strategic institutional investors.
The share capital will not be increased. Instead, the entire subscription price of EUR 5,782,306.40 will be recorded in the invested unrestricted equity reserve of the company. As a result of the share subscriptions, the number of shares in Herantis Pharma Plc will increase to 6,030,287 shares.
Financing development
The proceeds of the offering will primarily be used towards financing the preparations for the Phase 2 and Phase 3 clinical studies of CDNF and Lymfactin, for the preclinical development of a non-invasive CDNF, for strengthening the company’s capital structure and for other purposes decided by the Board of Directors of Herantis.
“The additional support of long-term strategic institutional investors highlights the potential of our two development programs. It also enables us to achieve the near-term milestones that can further validate them,” said Pekka Simula, CEO of Herantis. “The financing provides us with more stability to execute and drive value for our investors as we advance our clinical trials in Parkinson’s disease and secondary lymphedema.”
“With a better understanding for disease mechanisms, neurology including Parkinson’s disease is now more ripe for not only symptomatic treatment but truly disease modifying therapies,” said Mattias Häggblom, portfolio manager for Medica, Swedbank Robur’s global healthcare fund (Swedbank Robur was the lead investor in the directed share issue). “We find Herantis’ early data around CDNF very encouraging and look forward to support further clinical development to potentially bring this new treatment option to patients.”
About CDNF
As opposed to other treatment modalities for Parkinson’s Disease, CDNF represents an opportunity to modify the disease state by alleviating both motor and non-motor symptoms and stopping disease progression, effects that Herantis has demonstrated in non-human primates.
About Lymfactin
In Herantis’ second disease-modifying program for the treatment of lymphedema, stemming from professor Kari Alitalo’s research, the company is advancing a gene therapy approach to increase the expression of VEGF-C locally in the damaged tissue to reconstitute the lymphatic vasculature and thereby repair the lymphatic system to reduce the progressive swelling.
Photo of Pekka Simula, CEO, Herantis: Herantis Pharma
Published: March 13, 2019