CAP-CMV GmbH Raises New Funds to Further Develop its Novel hCMV Vaccine and Appoints New CEO

CAP-CMV GmbH, a company focusing exclusively on the development of a novel vaccine protecting against human Cytomegalovirus (hCMV) infection and a spin-out of CEVEC Pharmaceuticals GmbH, has announced that it raised in total €1.7 million from its investors Peppermint Venture Partners (PVP), NRW.Bank, Creathor Venture, KfW and private investors in a combined seed/start-up investment.

The funds will be used to advance further it´s vaccine candidate, HCMV dense bodies (DBs) derived from CEVEC´s human CAP cell technology. DBs contain highest amount of relevant antigens, and were shown to elicit strong and lasting humoral and cellular immune responses in preclinical models. DBs are the ideal vaccine candidate to prevent hCMV caused diseases. Congenital infection with hCMV is a leading cause for neonatal disabilities. As up to 40% of the population carry this virus the hCMV infection is also a major health threat to recipients of solid organ or stem transplantations.

Wolfgang Kintzel, start-up CEO of CAP-CMV comments: “We are very happy that we could now secure our Series A financing round for this unique vaccine project. The money will be used to prove in various animal studies the clear advantages of our system against other technologies as well as advancing our pre-clinical programmes.”

Also in March CAP-CMV´s shareholders appointed Albrecht Läufer as its new CEO. Joachim Rautter, Managing Partner at PVP, and speaker of CAP-CMV´s advisory board says: “Wolfgang has put CAP-CMV on the right track and we thank him for his tremendous efforts to establish the company. We now welcome Albrecht and wish him success in taking forward CAP-CMV on its growth path while Wolfgang will be appointed to the board of CAP-CMV”. Albrecht Läufer was cofounder and first CEO of Vakzine Projekt Management GmbH (VPM), the company which has started preclinical development of HCMV dense bodies and then licensed the project to CAP-CMV.