The funding round was led by new investor NeoMed Management, with participation from existing investors; OrbiMed Advisors (New York, NY), Polaris Venture Partners (Waltham, MA), and SV Life Sciences (Boston, MA). Dr. Claudio Nessi from NeoMed Management will join the Arsanis board of directors.
“Arsanis has made significant progress since its founding in 2010, and securing additional funding validates our approach to combat severe infectious diseases with antibodies” said Eszter Nagy, MD, PhD, Co-founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Arsanis. “We will use these funds to focus on the clinical development of our lead program against Staphylococcus aureus, ASN-100, while maturing our pipeline of anti-infective antibodies against other relevant pathogens”.
ASN-100 is a monoclonal antibody cocktail designed to prevent and treat severe hospital associated Staphylococcus aureus infections, and is currently in manufacture for clinical trials. Arsanis’ pipeline also includes preclinical monoclonal antibody programs against the multi-drug resistant gram negative pathogens Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, and a further program targeting Streptococcus pneumoniae. Arsanis’ approach combines extensive in-house infectious disease expertise with world-class antibody discovery and optimization capabilities through a partnership with Adimab LLC (Lebanon, NH, USA). This partnership has generated unique product candidates, putting Arsanis in a leading position in the field of antibody based anti-infectives.
This latest funding follows the recent announcement that Arsanis has been successful in raising significant non-dilutive grant funding to expand its infectious disease antibody pipeline. To date, over $7 million has been received, with the potential for an additional $20 million of funding over the next three years.
Tillman Gerngross, Ph.D. Co-Founder and Chairman of the board, commented, “We are delighted to have completed this round of financing and view the support of both our new and current investors as a strong endorsement of the team, our strategy and the anti-infective pipeline we are building. As we advance our programs towards the clinic, Arsanis is in a strong position to create substantial value for our investors and employees” “NeoMed is excited about backing an experienced management team and supporting the development of novel anti-bacterial therapeutics” said Claudio Nessi of NeoMed Management. “We look forward to working with the Arsanis team to grow the company and build significant value.”
About Arsanis
Arsanis is committed to the development of monoclonal antibody therapeutics against severe infectious diseases that cannot be controlled with currently available medical treatments. The company’s major focus is on life threatening infections that are caused by antibiotic resistant pathogens, occur in immune compromised patients or are associated with high mortality in spite of low rates of antibiotic resistance. Using first-in-class monoclonal antibody discovery technologies that support the selection of highly potent antibodies with unique qualities, Arsanis is building a broad portfolio of infectious disease programs. The most successful pre-clinical programs will be advanced into clinical proof-of-relevance studies.
Arsanis was founded in the fall of 2010 by Dr. Eszter Nagy (former SVP of Research at Intercell, AG), Dr. Tillman Gerngross (Co-founder and CEO of Adimab, and Co-founder and CSO of GlycoFi, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Merck & Co. since 2006) and Errik Anderson (Co-founder and COO of Adimab) who bring together expertise in monoclonal antibody discovery, infectious disease biology and commercializing innovation. Arsanis Biosciences GmbH, based in Vienna, Austria, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Arsanis, Inc USA.
For more information, visit www.arsanis.com.