Venture capital firm Omega Funds has created and provided initial funding to Aerium Therapeutics, a biotech startup seeking to develop a broadly effective drug for Covid-19.
Aerium, based in Boston and Lausanne, Switzerland, said it is developing a two-antibody combination treatment. In pre-clinical studies, the antibodies have been potent neutralisers of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants. That group includes Omicron and its sub-variants, among them the BA.2 strain that has been detected in at least 40 countries.
Omega Funds seeded Aerium in the second quarter of last year and in September also led a Series A round, which included F-Prime Capital. Aerium hasn’t publicly disclosed the amount, according to a spokesman.
While vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness in most people, for a significant number of others — transplant recipients, or patients with diseases like cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — they provide insufficient protection. These people could use an additional option, said Omega founder and managing director Otello Stampacchia. Aerium expects to begin clinical trials in the early summer, he added.
Aerium’s scientific founders are Giuseppe Pantaleo, professor of medicine and head of the immunology and allergy division at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois; and Didier Trono, professor and head of the laboratory of genetics and virology of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Omega Funds formed Aerium based on their work.
Other such treatments are already on the road to regulatory approval. In December, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency-use authorisation to Evusheld, a combination of two antibodies developed by drugmaker AstraZeneca for preventing Covid-19 in certain adults and children.
Another, Adagio Therapeutics, which went public last year after raising venture capital, said in February that it would have an analysis of clinical trials of an antibody treatment that could prevent and treat Covid-19.
Aerium also intends to develop small-molecule antiviral drugs against other epidemic and pandemic threats, said Dr. Stampacchia, who is Aerium’s executive chair.
From WSJ Pro Venture Capital
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