ANTABIO Completes € 12.5M Series A

Antabio SAS, a biopharmaceutical company developing novel antibacterial treatments in areas of highest unmet needs, announced today it has extended its Series A financing round with an additional €5.2 million subscribed by investment funds Omnes, BNP Paribas Développement, and Sham Innovation Santé (Turenne Capital). Existing shareholder Galia Gestion also participated in this extension. In October 2017, Antabio announced a first closing of its Series A financing round for €7.3 million subscribed by investment funds iXO Private Equity, IRDI SORIDEC Gestion, Galia Gestion and Antabio’s historical investor and former President of OM Pharma Christophe Ricard. The second closing brings the total raised in Series A to €12.5 million.

The new funding will be used to accelerate the development of Antabio’s novel inhibitor of bacterial metallo ß-lactamases ("MBLs") which will be combined with a carbapenem to fill an important gap in the treatment of drug-resistant infections. Superbugs carrying MBLs (such as NDM-1) are spreading worldwide and cause life-threatening drug-resistant infections that are deemed a critical medical priority by the WHO. There are currently no marketed inhibitors of MBLs.

The €12.5 million series A financing complements the CARB-X grant of up to $8.9 million awarded to Antabio in July 2017 to support the company’s Pseudomonas Elastase Inhibitor program (PEI) for the treatment of chronic Pseudomonas infections in Cystic Fibrosis patients.

"We are thrilled to welcome Omnes, BNP Paribas Développement, and Sham Innovation Santé to Antabio," said Marc Lemonnier, CEO of Antabio. "We have built a strong international team of experts to combat the most urgent unmet medical needs in the antibacterial space. This extension to our series A, coupled with the substantial non-dilutive funding received from CARB-X, provides solid financial means for Antabio to take our innovative program into the clinic and move closer to this goal".

Antibiotic resistance is a growing global health problem recognized as n°1 priority by the WHO. Today, 5 to 10% of hospital patients in the USA and Europe develop a hospital-acquired (nosocomial) infection with over 100,000 deaths due to drug-resistant bacterial infections per year and annual costs to public health exceeding €30 billion. On the horizon, alarming reports claim that by 2050 antimicrobial resistance will kill more people than cancer with an estimated 10 million people dying from resistant infections each year.

"Antibiotic resistance is one of the great challenges of our time. At Omnes, we were impressed by the innovative approach taken by the company to fight drug-resistant infections and we are delighted to support their strong international team to accelerate the development of their programs to the clinic" said Claire Poulard, Associate at Omnes.
 

About Omnes
Omnes is a leading Paris-based European investor in private equity and infrastructure. With €3.6 billion of assets under management, Omnes provides SMEs with the capital needed to finance growth. The firm has dedicated investment teams across three key areas: Venture Capital, Buyout & Growth Capital and Infrastructure. With more than 30 trade sales and nearly 15 IPOs in 19 years (including Novaled, Biovex, arGEN-X and Direct Energie), Omnes’ venture team is a leading French player in financing innovative SMEs with dual expertise in the deep-tech and healthcare sectors. Omnes is owned by its employees. Omnes is committed to ESG issues and has set up the Omnes Foundation in aid of children’s charities. It is also a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI).

About BNP Paribas Développement
BNP Paribas Développement, a BNP Paribas Group subsidiary founded in 1988, invests its own capital directly in promising small and medium-sized enterprises and mid-cap companies.  As a minority shareholder in these target companies, BNP Paribas Développement seeks to promote their growth and ensure their longer-term prosperity by facilitating ownership transfer.

In addition to providing financial resources so as to ensure the stability of any company in which BNP Paribas Développement invests, we also see our mission in helping the company management team to achieve its medium-term strategic plans.  As a minority shareholder, our approach is to assist our partner with an appropriate level of governance, based on our experience of managing a portfolio of some 300 company shareholdings and backed by the strength of a world-class financial group, but without interfering in the day-to-day running of the partner company.  Our policy of investing our own capital allows us to provide our partner companies with long-term backing suited to the nature of the particular business and its goals, and also enables us to act as an intermediary in such deals as capital re-organisations and external growth operations. In 2016, BNP Paribas Développement set up the WAI Venture Fund, which specialises in investing in Innovation-oriented companies, from the provision of seed capital through all subsequent funding rounds, with the aim of supporting the growth of high-potential startups.

About Sham Innovation Santé
Launched in July 2014, Sham Innovation Santé is an evergreen Venture Capital Fund controlled and owned by Sham, a French mutual insurance company specializing in insurance and risk management for professionals in the health, social and social-medical sectors and a French leader in civil liability (11,000 members in Europe – France, Italy, Spain, Germany –, € 2 billion in assets under management, 952 employees, revenues of € 438.2 million in 2018).
Advised and managed by Turenne Capital, Sham Innovation Santé invests into biotech and medtech companies that are developing breakthrough technologies in the medical and biotechnology fields. The portfolio – 12 companies – is being gradually built up by new investments in the healthcare and life sciences field, with a target of € 50 million.
 

About ANTABIO
Antabio is a private biopharmaceutical company developing novel antibacterial resistance-breakers to treat drug-resistant infections in areas of highest unmet medical need. Two of Antabio’s programs have received Wellcome Trust Seeding Drug Discovery Awards to date:(i) a novel, safe and efficacious inhibitor of bacterial metallo ß-lactamases to be combined with a carbapenem for the treatment of drug-resistant nosocomial infections and (ii) a first-in-class inhibitor of Pseudomonas virulence to be co-administered with standard-of-care antibiotics for the long-term management of chronic respiratory infections. This second program has recently received up to $8.9 million funding from the Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X). The company’s lead product is expected to enter the clinic in 2019 with anticipated fast track approval. Antabio has built a best in class, international team of experts in the field to progress its pipeline. The Company is in the process of acquiring additional assets focused on Gram-negative antibiotic resistant therapies.

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