Tromsø, Norway, and Dortmund, Germany – April 25th, 2024. KinSea Lead Discovery AS, a biopharmaceutical start-up pioneering the use of marine bioactives for the treatment of human diseases, announces the successful first closing of its seed financing round. It includes an equity investment from KHAN Technology Transfer Fund I GmbH & Co KG (KHAN-I), an early-stage life sciences venture fund based in Germany, and welcomes the new investor Berners AS, a North Norwegian investment company. A year ago, KinSea had already secured a convertible loan from KHAN-I, which was recently converted into shares.

The financing enables the company to further develop its lead program, a FLT3 kinase inhibitor based on unique chemistry from marine sources, towards preclinical and clinical testing. Data from in vivo proof-of-concept studies suggest superior properties over existing FLT3 inhibitors, including potential broad activity against known drug-induced and drug-resistant FLT3 mutations, improved selectivity, and outstanding in vivo potency. The program originates from the successful collaboration of the founding partners, Arctic University of Norway (UiT), University of Bergen (UiB), Norinnova, and Lead Discovery Center GmbH (LDC).

‘We are grateful for the continued confidence and support from KHAN-I, and delighted to welcome Berners AS on board’, says Jeanette Hammer Andersen, CEO of KinSea. ‘This first closing validates the transformative potential of our approach. We are very committed to take our FLT3 inhibitors through the next stages of drug discovery and development in order to provide entirely new treatment options for AML patients that are safer and more effective’.

KinSea also plans to gradually expand its drug discovery pipeline and establish a diversified portfolio of high-potential drug candidates based on novel chemical scaffolds from the Arctic Ocean for the treatment of cancer and other diseases.

‘We are excited to reaffirm our commitment to KinSea and its groundbreaking work in the field of marine-derived therapeutics. The team has made significant progress over the last year, and we are convinced that their unique approach and capable team will continue to drive the maturation and expansion of their pipeline, and eventually make a meaningful impact on patients’ lives, in particular with regard to urgently needed, improved therapies for AML patients’, comments Bert Klebl, Managing Director of KHAN-I.

Mats Sæverud, CEO of Berners AS, adds: ‘In KinSea, we found an ambitious startup company that wants to make an important impact by employing natural products from the Arctic Ocean. The KinSea team has bold visions, scalable solutions, excellent expertise and skills, and fits well with Berners´ ambitions.’

KinSea has already started discussions with further investors for a second and final closing.

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Contact
Lead Discovery Center GmbH
Otto-Hahn-Straße 15
44227 Dortmund
Germany
Phone: +49 231 97 42 70 00
Mail: pr@lead-discovery.de

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About KHAN-I

KHAN Technology Transfer Fund I GmbH & Co KG (KHAN-I) is an early-stage life sciences venture fund with €70 million under management. Our mission is to create value through cooperative drug development partnerships with academic innovators in Europe. KHAN-I focuses on first-in-class therapies for attractive markets with a high unmet medical need. The fund is managed by Khanu Management GmbH, an experienced team of professionals with proven track records in early-stage drug development and academic spin-offs as well as pharma licensing and partnering. KHAN-I received an investment from the European Investment Fund (EIF) with the support of InnovFin Equity, and with the financial backing of the European Union under Horizon 2020 Financial Instruments and the European Fund for Strategic Investments (“EFSI”) under the Investment Plan for Europe. KHANI is also supported by Austria Wirtschaftsservice GmbH (AWS with funds provided by the Austrian

Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs and the Austrian Foundation for Research, Technology, and Development), Max Planck Foundation, and Thyssen’sche Handelsgesellschaft mbH. In addition, KHAN-I sustains a preferred partnership with the Max-Planck Society (Max-Planck Gesellschaft e.V.).

Further information at www.khanu.de

About Berners AS

Berners AS is a newly established, privately owned investment company, based in Tromsø, Norway. Through investments and active ownership, Berners will contribute to the development of profitable and sustainable businesses, especially within the seafood and marine sector. We aim to be a supporter of the development of brands and competence clusters in Northern Norway. Our investment strategy is based on our knowledge and love for the coast and the sea, and the opportunities that exist there. Berners is owned by Triko AS (80%) and Larren Invest AS (20%).

About Norinnova

Norinnova is one of Northern Norway’s most competent and experienced agencies for research commercialization. Norinnova connects researchers, start-up environments, companies and commercial actors to develop and utilize the region’s innovation power. For more than 30 years, Norinnova has worked closely with researchers and leading research communities in Northern Norway to harness the power of innovation in this region. This collaboration has contributed to the creation of brand-new businesses and has reinforced existing companies through new products and services. Norinnova secures rights, helps provide funding, investigates market potential, finds relevant partners, and contributes so that the scientists can get their product or service to the market.

Further information available at: www.norinnova.no

About LDC

Lead Discovery Center GmbH (LDC) was established in 2008 by the technology transfer organization Max Planck Innovation, as a novel approach to capitalize on the potential of excellent basic research for the discovery of new therapies for diseases with high medical need. LDC takes on promising early-stage projects from academia and transforms them into innovative pharmaceutical leads and antibodies that reach initial proof-of-concept in animals as well as candidate nomination. In close collaboration with high-profile partners from research and industry, LDC is building a strong and growing portfolio of small molecule and antibody leads with exceptional medical and commercial potential.

LDC sustains a long-term partnership with the Max Planck Society and its institutes as well as with KHAN-I, and has formed alliances with AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck KGaA, Daiichi Sankyo, Qurient, InvIOS, Novo Nordisk, Cumulus Oncology, Nodus Oncology, JT Pharmaceuticals, KinSea Lead Discovery AS, HLB Pharma, the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research, e.g. In addition, LDC also works with leading translational drug discovery centers and with various investors to provide its assets for company creation.

Further information available at: www.lead-discovery.de

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Dortmund, October 12, 2016 – Lead Discovery Center GmbH (LDC) and the biotech company UGISense AG are about to initiate a collaboration to jointly develop innovative drugs using the proprietary Ugimeres^TM antisense platform. Additionally, LDC will acquire a minority stake in UGISense AG during a first 1.2 million Euros financing round involving several private investors. The partnership aims at combining the potential of the innovative Ugimeres antisense platform with LDC’s drug discovery expertise and target know-how to maximize synergies and jointly commercialize successful projects.

“We see the Ugimeres platform as a highly exciting addition to our own in-house drug discovery technologies. We believe that the drug class of peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) offers enormous potential especially in the innovative field of microRNAs and for so far ‘undruggable’ targets”, says Dr. Bert Klebl, CEO of the LDC. “We look forward to working closely with the UGISense team and to jointly advance our first pilot projects”.

“We are very excited about the successful financing of UGISense AG and welcome our new partner LDC. This partnership will allow us to focus closely on the high-quality development and commercialization of Ugimeres as innovative drugs for targets with high unmet medical need”, says Dr. Thomas Lindhorst of UGISense AG’s executive board.

About UGISense AG

UGISense AG is a biotech company dedicated to developing new and innovative antisense drugs in collaboration with partners from the industry and academia. The developments are made on the basis of a proprietary platform technology, i.e. the Ugimeres^TM. The company, which was first established in 2016, is being financed by private investors and has been accredited by the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA) (within the scope of their Venture Capital Grants program).

About Ugimeres^TM

Ugimeres^TM are short oligonucleotide sequences capable of interacting with single-stranded DNA or RNA by forming a double strand. Thanks to said double-strand formation, disease-relevant proteins will be specifically prevented from forming altogether or will be reduced to only a modified stage. This makes it possible to therapeutically influence the development of diseases at a very early stage of intervention. Structurally, Ugimeres^TM are derived from peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) to which important pharmacological functions have been added by way of chemical modifications.

For more details please go to: www.ugisense.com

Contact

Dr. Thomas Lindhorst
T. +43 (0)664 9123146
E. thomas.lindhorst@ugisense.com

UGISense AG
c/o Nordwind Capital GmbH
Residenzstrasse 18
80333 Munich

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Dortmund, June 7, 2016 – Researchers from the Lead Discovery Center (LDC) in Dortmund, Germany led by Dr. Bert Klebl and McGill University in Montréal, Canada led by Dr. David Y. Thomas will work closely together to identify novel tools for protein trafficking and folding diseases drug discovery.The 3-years research initiative between LDCand McGill University will be funded for a total of $1M.

The project is the first to be funded under the Canada/Germany Program, a joint collaboration between the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), through its ZIM Program,and the CQDM consortium in Canada.Falling under the broader Canada/Europe initiative, the Canada/Germany Program aims to support novel and potentially transformative next‐generation technologies with the potential to improve, enhance or accelerate the state of the art and drug development process.

“We are proud of the fruits that bear our partnership with BMWi. The creative and innovative aspects of this project are the reasons we fulfill our missions and organize international funding programs,” said Diane Gosselin, President and CEO at CQDM. “This public‐private partnership is willing to develop new expertise and to expand into new markets, and these collaborative efforts will certainly strengthen research in Canada and Germany.”

“This project is the outcome of a great collaboration with LDC scientists on an important research topic. The project aims at addressing a need in biopharmaceutical research that is still understudied and unmet. ER stress is implicated in many diseases and Dr. Klebl and I will work at developing new tools for its study thanks to the funding initiative of CQDM and ZIM,” said Dr. David Y. Thomas at McGill University.

“We are very excited to embark on this international collaboration together with Dr. Thomas from McGill University. It truly is a team effort that draws its strength from our complementary expertise and deep insights into the biology,”said Dr. Bert Klebl, CEO at LDC. “This public private partnership pulls together multidisciplinary scientific resources and may lead to the discovery of new targets, a better understanding of off targets of known drugs and eventually to the identification of novel drug candidates for protein trafficking diseases.”

About the Project: Protein trafficking and misfolding under scrutiny

One third of the proteins encoded in our DNA transit through the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) inside cells. The ER has several distinct mechanisms to check the integrity and proper folding of these proteins. Some protein trafficking respiratory diseases result from an overzealous quality control system that recognizes mutant proteins that are otherwise functional and tags them for degradation before they reach their correct location. This complex quality control system is achieved through a network of interacting enzymes called kinases. ER quality control is an understudied field of biology and could represent a goldmine of new targets to treat many diseases including neurodegenerative disorders, diabetes and cancer. We have shown that inhibitors of some of these kinases affect the accuracy of the ER quality control system and are able to correct trafficking defects responsible in some diseases. The aim of this project is to generate a platform to study the most important players responsible for the proper trafficking of proteins. This collaborative project will leverage the expertise of each researcher to generate a set of validated tools and chemical probes to interrogate the protein kinases involved in protein trafficking which could allow to identify new targets for the development of novel ER related diseases therapies.

About CQDM

CQDM is a pharma-based consortium active in early research whose mission is to fund the development of innovative tools and technologies to accelerate drug discovery. Unique in the world, CQDM’s business model is based on a collaborative approach where all stakeholders share the costs of biopharmaceutical research and benefit from its results. CQDM also provides a common meeting ground where academia, governments, and the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries converge to address numerous complex medical challenges. CQDM receives financial support from Merck, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly Canada, Janssen, Novartis Pharma Canada, Sanofi Canada, as well as from Quebec’s Ministry of Economy, Science and Innovation (MESI) and from the Government of Canada under the Business-Led Networks of Centres of Excellence Program (BL-NCE).

For more information:www.cqdm.org

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Dortmund, May 11, 2016 – The Lead Discovery Center GmbH (LDC), Max Planck Innovation GmbH and Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH have signed an agreement providing Boehringer Ingelheim with the option to receive the exclusive rights to a new lead compound for the treatment of schizophrenia to be discovered and developed at the LDC.

The novel approach builds on ground-breaking research results from Prof. Moritz Rossner and his team at the Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine in Göttingen. He will work closely together with the LDC team to identify and optimize novel compounds with strong therapeutic potential and develop it further to the stage of a validated pharmaceutical lead with in vivo efficacy. Moritz Rossner holds also a Professorship at Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich and is a co-founder of Systasy Bioscience GmbH.

Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe and disabling mental disorder ranked among the 12 most debilitating diseases by the World Health Organization. It affects about 1 in 100 people worldwide, changing the way they behave, think and perceive the world. Although anti-psychotic medications and psychosocial interventions can effectively reduce symptoms and improve patients’ lives, there remainsa strong need for new drugs truly addressing causative mechanisms and cognitive impairment.

Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder

which affects how a person behaves,

thinks and perceives the world.

“Schizophrenia is an incredibly complex disorder which dramatically changes the life of the individual affected,” says Prof. Rossner. “We believe our approach holds strong potential to improve the treatment options for patients, and this collaboration with the LDC and Boehringer Ingelheim is a great opportunity to advance it from our laboratory into pharmaceutical development.”

In this early discovery project Boehringer Ingelheim will take a seat on the project development team and will pay an option fee. In addition, the company will allocate internal resources to the programand support collaborating partners to strengthen the early development work. Once the project has attained proof-of-concept in relevant invivo models Boehringer Ingelheim can exclusively license the lead at pre-defined terms for subsequent preclinical and clinical development. Any revenue the LDC may receive from commercialization will be shared with the academic inventors and collaborating institutions.

“Since the LDC’s inception, we have been in close contact with Boehringer Ingelheim, establishing a relationship based on mutual trust over the years. We very much appreciate their expertise and commitment to driving forward innovative therapeutic approaches,”says Dr. Bert Klebl, CEO of the LDC. “It is a great pleasure for us to be launching our first joint project in the field of mental disorders, which we believe is often underestimated. We see strong commercial opportunities here, and there is already a strong line-up of promising projects in this area from our academic network.”

About Max Planck Innovation
Max Planck Innovation is responsible for the technology transfer of the Max Planck Society and, as such, serves as a link between industry and basic research. With its interdisciplinary team it advises and supports scientists in evaluating their inventions, filing patents, and founding companies. Max Planck Innovation offers the industry unique access to the innovations of the Max Planck Institutes, and therefore performs an important task: the transfer of basic research results into products, which contributes to economic and social progress.

Further information at: www.max-planck-innovation.de

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LDC and Roche will jointly advance innovative drug discovery projects

Dortmund, January 21, 2016 – The Lead Discovery Center GmbH (LDC) and Roche will collaborate to identify and leverage innovative therapeutic opportunities that address diseases of unmet medical need across several disease areas.

Projects will be sourced from the LDC’s academic partners, including leading universities and institutes from the Max Planck Society and the Helmholtz Association, as well as from Roche’s innovation network. The partners will work together to advance projects from as early as target level up to the identification of a preclinical candidate. Over an initial three year period, LDC will act as a translational incubator for Roche and carry out small molecule projects in close collaboration with the scientific inventors and their academic institutions.

“We are delighted to team up with Roche, the world’s largest biotech company,” says Dr Bert Klebl, CEO of the LDC. “We are impressed by their deep expertise across many disease areas and the perfect cultural fit with our team. We are definitely on the same wavelength regarding our approach to early drug discovery and share a mission to transform academic innovation into tangible benefits to patients.”

Upon attainment of a predefined milestone, Roche has option rights to an exclusive license. The terms and conditions of collaboration and licensing will be agreed on a project-by-project basis to ensure a fair balance of investments and potential returns between the partners. Any revenue the LDC may receive from a potential future commercialization will be shared with the academic inventors and collaborating institutions. Roche’s contributions will include research funding and possibly in-kind support required for optimal project progress, such as access to compound libraries.

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