Events
Düsseldorf, Germany, February 12th, 2021: Priavoid GmbH closes a Series A financing round in the amount of EUR 7 million. The financing by seed investor Riesner Verwaltungs GmbH and HBG Beteiligungs- und Beratungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG allows the company to intensify the development of its drug pipeline.
Priavoid’s platform technology was developed by Prof. Dieter Willbold, Chair of Physical Biology at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf and Director of the Institute of Structural Biochemistry at Forschungszentrum Jülich. It uses mirror-image phage display selection and various optimization technologies to develop compounds consisting exclusively of D-enantiomeric (mirror-image) amino acid residues. The all-D-peptide-platform enables the design of lead compounds against neurodegenerative diseases that are caused by prion-like protein aggregates. The drug candidates exhibit a completely new and highly innovative anti-prionic mechanism of action to specifically dissolve these protein aggregates. The therapeutic focus is on diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
With the investment from Riesner Verwaltungs GmbH and HBG Beteiligungs- und Beratungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, Priavoid is able to intensify and expand research and development for its preclinical drug candidates. “Professor Riesner has been actively supporting the research and development work of the all-D-peptide drug class for years. He is not only an investor and chairman of the supervisory board of Priavoid, but also contributes his experience as co-founder of the biotech companies Qiagen, Evotec and others.” said Philipp Bürling, CEO of Priavoid. “This investment in Priavoid’s R&D efforts will be a quantum leap to the significance of this new class of compounds.” comments Professor Willbold, founder and also member of Priavoid’s supervisory board.
The closing of the financing round extends a series of recent structural milestones achieved by Priavoid. In December, it was announced that Nobel Laureate Prof. Stanley Prusiner (UCSF), who is considered the discoverer of prions, has joined Priavoid’s supervisory board. In addition, the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SprinD) announced on Feb. 04, 2021, that it will support the clinical phase II of Priavoid‘s Alzheimer’s program PRI-002.
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About Priavoid GmbH:
Priavoid GmbH is a spin-off of Research Center Jülich and Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. The company was founded in 2017 and is based in Düsseldorf. It develops novel all-d-peptide drug candidates for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) or tauopathies. The most advanced of these is PRI-002 for Alzheimer’s disease. All drug candidates are designed to have an anti-prionic mechanism of action to dissolve neurotoxic protein aggregates. The company is privately funded, including by Qiagen co-founder Prof. em. Dr. Dr. h.c. Detlev Riesner. In addition, the development is significantly supported by the German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovations, which is funding the PRIMUS-AD phase II study for the drug candidate PRI-002.
