Leiden thrombosis therapy spinout VarmX had raised an undisclosed seed sum in June 2017 and converted debt to equity in its latest round.
VarmX, a Netherlands-based haemostasis and thrombosis therapy spinout from Leiden University, closed a €7.5m ($8.7m) series A round yesterday that included InnovationQuarter, the provincial development agency for South Holland.
Venture capital firm BioGeneration Ventures led the round, which complemented a $5.8m loan from government-owned Netherlands Enterprise Agency’s Innovation Credit program.
Leiden University and provincial proof-of-concept fund Uniiq converted existing loans to VarmX into equity as part of the round.
Spun out in 2016, VarmX is aiming to help patients at risk of spontaneous stroke or vein thrombosis from suffering acute internal bleeding as a side-effect of Xa inhibitors, which are prescribed as anti-coagulants.
The company’s lead compound, PseudoXa, is being developed to restore blood clotting while Xa inhibitors remain active.
The candidate is built on research at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) led by Pieter Reitsma, a professor of thrombosis and haemostasis in LUMC’s Einthoven Laboratory for Vascular and Regenerative Medicine.
The series A capital will support recruitment and help VarmX hone the compound’s production process, focusing on pharmacodynamics and kinetics. It also plans to put PseudoXa through pre-clinical and clinical studies while formulating additional compounds to treat haemostasis and thrombosis.
BioGeneration Ventures and Innovation Quarter had previously supplied VarmX with an undisclosed amount of seed capital in June 2017, the year after Leiden University invested an undisclosed sum in a pre-seed round that reportedly included $318,000 from Uniiq.
