atugen AG raises EUR 5 million venture funding for siRNA therapeutics program
siRNA therapeutics patent application published
Berlin. atugen AG, The gene silencing Company(TM), announced that it has raised EUR5 million in its third financing round since it was founded in 1998. The new investment will enable atugen to accelerate its work on the development of siRNA therapeutics.
This financing round managed by WestLBPanmure was co-led by the new investor Novartis Venture Fund, Switzerland and funds advised by Apax Partners and joined by atugen's previous investor MPM Capital.
Announcing the closing of the funding round, Thomas Christély, COO and CFO, reported that atugen has developed an unrivalled set of gene silencing tools including potential therapeutic siRNA drugs. atugen uses these tools in its target discovery and validation business to identify and validate disease targets for its customers. The shift towards exploiting the therapeutic utility of siRNA is based on the in-house research activities, which led to the development of novel siRNA molecules which are stabilized against degradation by serum proteases. These data were published in Nucleic Acids Research in June 2003. "We are encouraged by our investors' confidence in our work and are very pleased to welcome Novartis Venture Fund as a first time investor", said Thomas Christély.
Dr. Rudolf Gygax, Managing Director of Novartis Venture Fund, said, "We are very pleased with our investment in atugen since we believe atugen has made some impressive advances in the scope of gene silencing. Their recent developments in stabilizing siRNA molecules could well take this technology into the therapeutic arena."
siRNA therapeutics patent application published
atugen announced that patent application EP1389637, filed on 18 August 2002, was published on 18 February 2004. The proprietary ´composition of matter´ patent covers atugen´s stabilized siRNA structures. The patent would give atugen freedom to operate in the field of siRNA therapeutics.
Earlier this year atugen launched a new program to develop siRNA therapeutics. This program is designed to leverage attugen's accumulated know-how and proprietary technologies in gene silencing. The patent application EP1389637 describes novel siRNA structures that are chemically modified to increase half-life and improve the pharmacokinetic profile of potential siRNA drugs. The technology underlying atugen´s stabilized siRNA molecules has been published in Nucleic Acids Research (Czauderna et al, 31:2705). The molecules are fully functional and display high potency in inhibiting gene expression, and may thus represent a powerful new technology for therapeutic applications of oligonucleotides.
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