2023-09-07 07:00:00
The Series A fundraising is substantial for a young company. After raising 15 million euros in seed funding, the Parisian biotech Corteria Pharmaceuticals has just raised €65 million in series A financing. A round co-led by the American investment fund OrbiMed and the French Jeito Capital, with a of all existing investors (Kurma Partners, Fountain Healthcare Partners, V-Bio Ventures, Invivo Capital and Omnes Capital). Enough to move towards the clinic for the first program of the very young biotech.
A biotech from Sanofi’s cardiovascular R&D
“The creation of the company follows the cessation – purely for strategic reasons – of cardiovascular R&D by Sanofi”, recalls Philip Janiak, founder and president of Corteria, and former director of cardiovascular research at Sanofi. “We have selected the two most promising programs to be able to pursue them, by licensing these programs”he adds.
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To these two programs, the biotech has added a third, developed in-house. With the same common objective: to treat serious forms of heart failure, a pathology that affects 60 million people worldwide and whose incidence continues to grow. For its most advanced program, Corteria has chosen to focus on a subpopulation of patients suffering from worsening heart failure, i.e. approximately 20% of chronic patients who develop particularly severe symptoms (respiratory congestion, large difficulty in breathing, swelling of the legs, severe fatigue, etc.).
Hard-to-treat heart failure complications
A complication that affects the heart, lungs and kidneys, synonymous with often repeated hospitalizations and weakening of the patient. “The quality of life is deteriorated, the mortality for these patients reaches what can be observed in lung cancer”, laments the leader. To act on the mechanisms involved in these severe forms of heart failure, Corteria is developing three molecules including two CRF2 agonists (or Corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor 2), a receptor involved in the regulation of cardio-renal balances, whose action promotes the reduction of edema and congestion.
“Compared to the natural molecule, we have stabilized it and made it administrable by subcutaneous route, with a very long duration of action”, specifies Philip Janiak. Other laboratories are exploring this path, but Corteria specifies “that to his knowledge, we are the most advanced. » Its third program is developing a drug candidate that neutralizes vasopressin, a hormone involved in many complications of heart failure, associated in particular with hyponatremia. Thanks to this raising of €65 million, Corteria wants to move forward quickly and head-on towards the clinic.
A phase II targeted from 2025
“The first CRF2 program in the treatment of worsening heart failure will enter the clinic early next year, followed, nine months later, by the second program in the treatment of right heart failure. We hope to start a phase II for the first program as early as 2025”, projects Philip Janiak. With a healthy cash flow, Corteria is giving itself the possibility of financing these first two phases and the two phases I of its two other programs. The momentum around Corteria also signals a return of interest in the field of cardiovascular diseases, while synergies are being created with treatments for metabolic diseases, such as Novo Nordisk’s antidiabetic semaglutide, recently evaluated in the heart failure.
“There has been a disengagement from certain cardiovascular laboratories, linked to mixed results in the field. However, pathologies such as heart failure remain an important public health problem, in constant progression, and associated with a number and costs consequent of hospitalizations. The market is large and laboratories are once once more positioning themselves in this field.”analyze Philip Janiak.
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