BioVersys Wins €6.9m to Trial its Tuberculosis Compound
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Co-founder and CEO Marc Gitzinger explains how the funding will accelerate potential treatments for the 10 million new tuberculosis suffers diagnosed every year.
Tuberculosis, one of the top ten causes of death worldwide, killed 1.6 million people in 2017. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.7 billion people, or 23 percent of the world’s population, have a latent tuberculosis infection and risk of developing active tuberculosis disease during their life.
What is BioVersys' mission and innovation?
Bacterial resistance to current antibiotics is one of the biggest threats to humankind. BioVersys has built a very strong pipeline of drugs in development to answer this unmet medical need. Our Tuberculosis program is of particular interest, as it builds on the technology developed at ETH Zurich addressing a new set of targets that help overcome the resistance. BioVersys is working in all its programs on truly novel antibacterial drugs that overcome resistance. We are now looking forward to bring the Tuberculosis program and one additional program against hospital-acquired infections into clinical development this year. Having started on the basis of not much more than an idea and first hints that the technology could work, this is a massive step. We are also proud on the long term partnership we have with GlaxoSmithKline on this program.
How will this €6.9-million-grant from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking's AntiMicrobial Resistance Accelerator program help achieve your vision?
This grant is unique in many ways: usually EU grants of this magnitude are given to consortia of at least six partners — on this occasion BioVersys is the sole recipient of the grant, while GSK continues to support the project on top. This grant will cover the project's cost until end of clinical Phase I development and is thus an incredible support to help realize BioVersys' vision of bringing our new therapy to the 10 million new Tuberculosis patients per year, as fast as possible. We are very proud of this achievement and at the same time eager to deliver on the next steps.
You won Venture Kick in 2008, you're one a select group of double Venture Leaders winners, and BioVersys also ranked at the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award three years consecutively. How did these different programs help you lay the foundation for your growth and today's achievement?
Venture Kick was really the Kickstarter for our company. It was pushing us to actually incorporate a company and transform a very early idea into a true drug discovery program. This has now resulted in a company with a very strong pipeline to help answer the global health threat of antimicrobial resistance.
We still benefit from the Venture Leaders roadshows and the contacts we established in China. The Chinese market is very important and with the significant and continuing evolution of the Chinese Food and Drug Administration, China has also become an important player for biotech companies.
Being in the TOP 100, and ranking twice among the top 5, was a great honor. Switzerland is a country of high-tech entrepreneurs and so many incredible companies develop from its startup scene supported by Venturelab. I can only pledge for even more support to these entrepreneurs, an ever growing environment of capital to help those companies get off the ground and a mindset that enables us to work together on the future challenges with great innovative technologies. The TOP 100 is a fantastic platform that helps make all these wonderful companies visible to a larger public and make people aware of their achievements. This is positive for the entire startup environment and for the individual companies as their visibility also vis-à-vis investors grows.
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