Curetis AG attracts Forbion and Roche as new investors

10-31-2011: Curetis AG announced the expansion of its Series A financing round by € 9.6 million. The additional funds increase the round to a total of € 34.1 million and the total capital raised to date to € 36.6 million. The financing was led by Forbion Capital Partners together with Roche Venture Fund. CD-Venture and Curetis´ management also participated in the round. Holger Reithinger, Partner at Forbion Capital Partners, has joined Curetis' Board of Directors. Roche will get an observer seat on the Board of Directors.

Since its inception in 2007, Curetis AG has developed the versatile Unyvero™ instrument platform which handles disease-specific disposable cartridges for the analysis of various marker panels, covering both pathogens and antibiotic resistance genes. The Unyvero™ platform combines a fully automated sample preparation working with a comprehensive range of native clinical sample types, with isolation, amplification and highly multiplexed detection of DNA. The first application, a solution for comprehensive pneumonia testing, has successfully completed extensive pre-clinical testing, is about to enter into pivotal clinical trials towards regulatory clearance and is scheduled to enter the European market as a CE-marked device in 2012.

“There is an urgent unmet medical need for faster identification of pathogens and resistance markers due to increasing antibiotic resistance and even multidrug resistance. With pneumonia, most current diagnostics are still relying on culture-based technologies, which can take days to deliver results,” said Holger Reithinger, Partner at Forbion Capital Partners. “Curetis' technology platform will reduce this timeline to hours. I was impressed by the ease-of-use, for the first time including the always-challenging sample preparation in the work flow, and the versatility of the platform allowing for further applications to come. The company is led by an experienced diagnostics industry management team, which has built the company from the start. I am looking forward to helping to make this a commercial success."

"We are pleased to have Forbion and Roche leading our expanded series A financing. These two investors bring additional breadth and depth of molecular diagnostics expertise to the table and significantly strengthen our investor syndicate for the upcoming corporate development phases,” added Oliver Schacht, CEO of Curetis. “I am also delighted to see CD-Venture increase their commitment to Curetis and have taken the opportunity myself to invest at this exciting stage of Curetis’ development. We are now fully financed for the upcoming clinical trials in the EU and the US, our planned 2012 European market launch of the Unyvero platform and pneumonia application and the FDA filing and clearance in 2012/13."

Schacht said that the proceeds will also be used to develop cartridges for additional indications, e.g. for surgical site infection and tuberculosis and allow Curetis a more aggressive international business development and marketing strategy.