Switzerland’s Lumavita, a newly-created specialty biopharmaceutical company focusing on anti-infectives for women’s health, has raised around 11 million euros.
The Basel-based group has completed a Series A financing of 18 million Swiss francs and the lead investors were Atlas Venture, BB Biotech Ventures and BioMedInvest. Its product portfolio includes FemiFect (pentamycin) for the treatment of vaginitis, which has already been approved in Switzerland, and SPK-601, a first-in-class phosphatidylcholine phospholipase C (PCPLC) inhibitor for the potential treatment of infections caused by human papilloma virus and herpes simplex, which is in Phase I.
Karl Naegler, principal at Atlas and a board member at Lumavita, said “we are joined in this compelling late-stage investment by additional top-tier healthcare funds. He added that the successful financing round “enables the combined expertise of the newly-appointed senior management team to realise the value of the assets we have”.
Juerg Eckhardt, a partner at BB Biotech Ventures and chairman of the new firm, said that FemiFect has “the potential to be the first-line choice for the empirical treatment of vaginitis.” The worldwide market for vaginitis is estimated at $2.4 billion and Lumavita has already established a distribution network to launch the product in Switzerland, Latin America, Asia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Together, they comprise approximately 30% of the total market.
Lumavita also announced that its new chief executive is Nicholas Benedict, who has worked for Roche, Novartis and most recently Basilea Pharmaceutica, where he was head of commercial strategy and operations.
