Amal Therapeutics Acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim for up to €425 Million

15.07.2019 16:00, Guillaume Tinsel

This is the biggest exit news of a swiss startup since the beginning of the year 2019: Venture Kick and Venture Leaders Alumni Amal Therapeutics gets acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim for up to €425 Million to add key platform supporting Boehringer Ingelheim’s focus on patients with difficult-to-treat gastrointestinal and lung cancers. Congratulations to all the team!

Boehringer Ingelheim - one of the pharmaceutical industry’s top 20 companies with some 50,000 employees - today announced its acquisition of all shares of AMAL Therapeutics SA, a private Swiss biotechnology company which ranked at the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award four years in a row from 2014 to 2017. AMAL Therapeutics focus on cancer immunotherapy and advancing first-in-class therapeutic cancer vaccines derived from its technology platform KISIMA.

The total transaction could amount up to EUR 325 million, and is comprised of an upfront payment as well as contingent clinical, development and regulatory milestones plus up to EUR 100 million if certain commercial milestones are hit.

“I am extremely proud of the hard work of AMAL’s entire team, which is validated by this acquisition, and very excited to further develop the KISIMA technology platform within Boehringer Ingelheim. It will enable us to realize the full potential of our KISIMA platform to fight solid cancers while preserving AMAL’s approach to biotechnology research and our scientific and academic networks. Moreover, sharing resources and capabilities in clinical development will greatly help us to move ATP128 and other assets forward.” said AMAL founder and chief executive Madiha Derouazi.

When launching her company, Derouazi took her first entrepreneurial training back in 2009 with Venturelab during a Business Creation course (then known as Venture Plan), won financial support and training from Venture Kick in 2012 and won a seat on the Venture Leaders roadshow to Boston the same year, which she described as "the greatest experience I had as a young entrepreneur, an amazing program."