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Syncona’s Anaveon secures Series B financing

Syncona’s Anaveon secures Series B financing – Syncona has committed CHF35m (£29m) to Anaveon AG as part of a CHF110m (£90m) Series B financing round. Syncona was a cornerstone investor. The financing round was led by Forbion and supported by a leading international syndicate of specialist investors, including existing investor Novartis Venture Fund and new investors Cowen Healthcare Investments (a division of Cowen Investment Management), Pfizer Ventures and Pontifax.

3p NAV uplift

Following the Series B financing, Syncona has revalued its existing investment which has resulted in an 88% uplift in the value of its previous stake. This adds £20m or 3p per share to Syncona’s NAV. Including the drawdown of the first tranche of Syncona’s Series B investment of CHF21m, Syncona’s holding value of Anaveon is now £59m. On drawdown of the full Series B financing, Syncona’s ownership stake in Anaveon will be 38%.

About Anaveon

Anaveon is focused on enhancing the immune response to cancer. Anaveon’s lead asset, ANV419, is a selective IL-2 receptor agonist, a type of protein drug which can potentially generate therapeutic cancer responses by expanding certain immune cells (T-cell and Natural Killer cells) with known anti-cancer activity. ANV419 has been designed to seek to overcome known challenges with selectivity, toxicity and durability of human IL-2, an approved drug for the treatment of metastatic melanoma and renal cancer. This type of product, if approved, could be used both as a monotherapy and in combination with other treatments (e.g. checkpoint antibodies) in the treatment of solid and liquid tumours.

Anaveon has recently released encouraging pre-clinical data which suggests that ANV419 could have a class-leading efficacy/safety profile, with clinical data from the company’s Phase I/II open label study of ANV419 expected in Q1 CY2022.

Following the Series B financing, Anaveon has now raised total funds of CHF145m since its Series A financing in 2019. These proceeds will be used to explore ANV419’s full therapeutic potential via the initiation of multiple Phase II clinical programmes. The funding will also be used to broaden the company’s pipeline with new programmes such as Anaveon’s targeted follow-on compound, now in pre-clinical development.

SYNC : Syncona’s Anaveon secures Series B financing

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