$62.5 million Series A fund raising for Prilenia Therapeutics

Life sciences venture capital firm Forbion says that its newest portfolio company, Prilenia Therapeutics, a Naarden, Netherlands- and Herzliya, Israel-based clinical stage biotech company, has raised $62.5 million in a Series A financing round. The funding will be used to launch Prilenia’s planned Huntington’s disease (HD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) late-stage clinical trials.

The funding round was led by Forbion and included new investors, Morningside Venture Investments and Sectoral Asset Management. Existing investors Talisman Capital Partners and Genworks 2 also participated in the round. The Series A financing brings the total capital invested in Prilenia Therapeutics since its foundation in September 2018 to $84.5 million.

The proceeds will fund two late-stage trials, which could lead to the registration of pridopidine for the treatment of HD and ALS. Pridopidine is a highly selective sigma-1 receptor (S1R) agonist. It has shown to maintain functional capacity in early HD patients, as measured by the Total Functional Capacity (TFC) score. Furthermore, it was recently selected from an international competition of over 30 potential therapeutics for inclusion in the first ever ALS platform trial, led by the Healey Center for ALS at Massachusetts General Hospital. The trials – Phase III trial in HD and the platform trial in ALS - are expected to commence in second-half 2020.

Michael Hayden becomes CEO

Alongside the closing of the financing round, Dr Michael Hayden, has been appointed as chief executive of Prilenia. He has been serving as executive chairman of Prilenia since the company was founded. Dr Hayden is a world-renowned scientist in Huntington’s disease research. He is the former president of Global R&D and chief scientific officer at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (NYSE: TEVA), where he led the development of 35 new products towards approval in several major markets, predominantly in CNS. He co-founded five biotechnology companies of which two realized successful exits and three became public, most recently 89bio (ETNB).