Paris Descartes University's gene therapy developer has raised $42.1m altogether following a series B featuring existing investors including Inserm Transfert Initiative.
Eyevensys, a France-based eye disease therapy developer leveraging Paris Descartes University research, closed a $30m series B round yesterday backed by Inserm Transfert Initiative, the tech transfer arm of research institute Inserm.
Pharmaceutical firm Boehringer Ingelheim led the round through its Venture Fund (BIVF), while Bpifrance, Pontifax Venture Capital, CapDecisif, Global Health Sciences (GHS) Fund and Pureos Bioventures also participated.
Founded in 2008, Eyevensys is developing gene therapies for retinal and ophthalmological diseases. Its approach allows for injecting the eye’s ciliary muscle with DNA plasmids, enabling therapeutic proteins to be secreted to the back of the eye, using an electric pulse-driven technique called electroporation.
The technology is based on research led by founder and chief scientific officer Francine Behar-Cohen, a professor of ophtalmology at Paris Descartes and head of the department of ophthalmology at the university’s hospital.
The series B capital will fund clinical development of Eyevensys’s lead candidate, EY606, which is indicated for non-infectious uveitis, a condition characterised by inflamed tissue in the eye’s vascular middle layer, uvea. EY606 is set to enter a second phase 2 trial in the US in early 2020.
Eyevensys will also use the money to drive the development of pre-clinical candidates, including EYS611, indicated for retinitis pigmentosa – a genetic disorder often characterised by diminished night vision – and age-related macular degeneration, which causes progressive vision loss, particularly in patients over 50 years old.
Neena Kadaba, director of science at Quark Venture, one of GHS Fund’s backer has joined the board of directors together with Dominik Escher, managing partner at Pureos Bioventures.
Eyevensys previously closed a $10m series A round led by Pontifax Venture Capital in 2016 with participation from Bpifrance, having raised $8.3m in a first series A tranche led by BIVF three years previously.
The first series A tranche was rounded off by Inserm Transert Initiative, Bpifrance and CapDecisif, the same investors in Eyevensys’s $2.1m seed round in 2012, where Bpifrance invested through its biotech-oriented fund, Innobio.
