Polyplus-transfection raises €2.5m in funding
Will enable the firm to expand its therapeutic research activities
Polyplus-transfection, a French developer of solutions for the delivery of nucleic acids in research and therapeutics, has raised €2.5m in funding.
Two new shareholders, AIRFI (Alsace Inter Regio Fonds d’Investissement) and Sudinnova, have invested €1m and €0.5m in the firm, respectively. CIC Vizille Capital Innovation and CIC Finance, existing shareholders, also participated in the funding round.
Strasbourg-based Polyplus-transfection plans to use the investment to expand its r&d resources in new compounds dedicated to siRNA delivery, which it says have yielded significant and promising preclinical results in lung and prostate cancer models.
Polyplus-transfection is also planning to recruit an extra 10 researchers and laboratory technicians, which will increase the tally to 25, out of a total workforce of 40.
‘We are delighted with this funding round, which will enable us to augment our research programme into second-generation flagship compounds for therapeutic RNA interference,’ said Polyplus-transfection chairman Gabriel Festoc.
‘We have made effective, breakthrough innovations at a fundamental stage of the in vivo delivery process, which is directly responsible for the problems encountered by other players in their attempts to transform molecules (such as siRNA or miRNA) into medicines.’
‘Polyplus has succeeded in developing its core business, the sale of reagents, while maintaining a major r&d effort, which means it now has some very interesting results to show,’ said Karine Lignel, director of participations at CIC Vizille Capital Innovation and non-executive director of Polyplus-transfection.