CEVEC Raises EUR 4.5 Million in a Financing Round to Commercialize its Leading CAP-Based Technologies

CEVEC Pharmaceuticals has announced the successful completion of a financing round of EUR 4.5 million. New investors included Investtodate GmbH, Frank Ubags, CEO, and Nicole Faust, CSO of CEVEC. Existing investors also participated in this financing. These included Peppermint VenturePartners GmbH, Creathor Venture Management GmbH, NRW.Bank, KfW Bank, G.A.T. Holding, as well as a number of private individuals.

With the May 2015 introduction of the CAPGo and CAPGT production systems, both based on its proprietary CAP technology, CEVEC now focuses on the fully scalable production of tailor-made glyco-optimized proteins and gene therapy vectors. CEVEC will use the new capital to drive further development of its unique CAPGo and CAPGT platforms, thus creating new industry standards for the manufacturing of recombinant glycoproteins, as well as viral vectors for gene therapy applications.

CEVEC's CAPGo system comprises a comprehensive panel of glyco-optimized human suspension cell lines that differ in their glycosylation capabilities and allow for the recombinant production of a variety of complexly glycosylated proteins such as cytokines, ion channels, virus envelope proteins, coagulation factors or other plasma proteins to name just a few. Most recently, the company published data on glyco-optimized recombinant human alkaline phosphatase and C1 esterase inhibitor, which both showed excellent pharmacokinetic properties in preclinical studies compared to existing recombinant or serum-derived molecules including significantly prolonged serum-half-lives.

With its CAPGT cell lines, CEVEC provides a novel platform for the industrial production of viral vectors for gene therapy applications. CAPGT cells show a broad viral spectrum supporting lentiviral (LV), adenoviral (AV) and adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors. Growing in serum-free suspension cultures, CAPGT provides outstanding production capabilities and high cell densities allowing for easier scale-up and reduced production costs when compared to adherent cell culture systems.

"CAPGo has the potential to become the new standard in glyco-optimized protein production. Since its introduction, we are experiencing huge interest in our unique expression system and were able to establish a number of collaborations, the first with Biotest was announced in June," commented Frank Ubags, CEO of CEVEC Pharmaceuticals GmbH . "One of the big challenges in gene therapy is the industrial production of reliable and safe vectors that carry the DNA molecule to the target cell. Our CAPGT expression platform addresses this unmet need and enables the commercial production of gene therapy treatments."