Thermosome raises €4.6m

08-Apr-2016 - Germany

Thermosome GmbH, an emerging biopharmaceutical company, announced the closing of its first financing round, raising net proceeds of approximately €1.9 million from funds managed by High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH and Bayern Kapital GmbH, respectively, as well as a group of private investors. This first financing round is substantially enlarged by a recently approved grant from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) providing additionally €2.7 million over the project duration of 3 years.

Thermosome’s TSL technology is a proprietary drug delivery platform used to create thermosensitive drug-loaded nanocarriers which locally release their encapsulated drug within the blood stream upon the influence of mild heat (40-42°C). Thereby, up to 15 fold higher local drug concentrations can be reached while simultaneously reducing the systemic exposure and side effects of conventional parenteral drug application. Various methods for triggering release through focused application of mild heat are clinically established.

Thermosome’s lead candidate is a formulation of a potent, but highly toxic chemotherapeutic drug that has already achieved the pre-clinical proof-of-concept in several animal studies. In these studies, it consistantly showed dramatically improved efficacy at significantly reduced side effects compared to conventional delivery. The proceeds from the first financing round and the grant will be used to move Thermosome’s lead candidate through GMP manufacturing and pre-clinical development into a first clinical study in patients with certain solid tumors. Thermosome envisions to use its novel platform technology to vastly enlarge the therapeutic index and safety window of drugs and reach improved therapeutic outcomes in patients.

The firm’s technology was invented by Prof. Dr. Hansjoerg Eibl at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen. It was applied, among others, in various in vitro and in vivo studies by a research group at the University Hospital of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Munich. “We are happy to see the basic invention of Prof. Dr. Hansjoerg Eibl being transformed into a commercial, biopharmaceutical development”, comments Dr. Florian Kirschenhofer, StartUp & Portfolio Manager at Max-Planck-Innovation GmbH.

https://www.bionity.com/en/news/157549/thermosome-raises-4-6m.html