Step Pharma, an Archamps, France-based biotech company developing novel drugs for oncology and autoimmune diseases, closed a €35m Series B financing.
New investors Hadean Ventures and Sunstone Life Science Ventures co-led the round, joining existing investors Kurma Partners, Pontifax and Bpifrance, which reinvested through its Innovative Biotherapies and Rare Diseases fund and InnoBio 2 fund. As part of the financing, Jacob L Moresco from Sunstone Life Science Ventures and Walter Stockinger from Hadean Ventures will join the Step Pharma Board of Directors.
The company intends to use the funds to advance:
- its lead proprietary CTPS1 inhibitor, STP938, into clinical development for the treatment of T-cell malignancies, and
- development of CTPS1 inhibitors in other haematological malignancies and solid tumours.
Founded in June 2014 by Kurma Partners, the Imagine Institute and Sygnature Discovery based on the scientific discoveries of Prof. Alain Fischer and Dr Sylvain Latour’s laboratory at the Imagine Institute, Paris and led by Andrew Parker, CEO, Step Pharma is focused on the development of a novel class of oral nucleotide synthesis inhibitors targeting CTPS1 for the improved treatment of a range of oncology and autoimmune diseases. The company has identified several inhibitors of CTPS1, with the most advanced, STP938, being prepared for clinical studies in T-cell malignancies.
CTPS1 (cytidine triphosphate synthase 1) is an enzyme that plays a critical role in DNA synthesis, cell division and proliferation but whose function is highly selective to certain cell types, in particular proliferating T cells, making it an ideal target for drug development.
FinSMEs
24/03/2021