arGEN-X BV announces first closing of its Series A equity financing round

Sep 10 2009

arGEN-X BV, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of human antibodies using its proprietary SIMPLE Antibody(TM) platform, today announced the successful first closing of its Series A equity financing round. The Company raised EUR 9.5million (~ USD 13.6 million) from a syndicate of leading life science investors. The financing round is one of the largest of its kind in the last 12 months.

The deal was co-led by Forbion Capital Partners (The Netherlands) and LSP (Life Sciences Partners - The Netherlands). Christina Takke for Forbion Capital Partners and John de Koning for LSP have joined the arGEN-X Supervisory Board. Other members of the syndicate are KBC Private Equity (Belgium), BioGeneration Ventures (The Netherlands) and existing shareholders Erasmus MC Biomedical Fund and Thuja Capital Healthcare Funds.

arGEN-X will use the proceeds to further develop the Company's proprietary, unencumbered SIMPLE Antibody(TM) engine and to continue to build a proprietary pre-clinical antibody product portfolio. arGEN-X's SIMPLE Antibody(TM) platform yields monoclonal antibodies which combine an unparalleled functional diversity against human disease targets with best in class human germline homology. arGEN-X's SIMPLE Antibodies(TM) are generated in vivo, starting from active immunization, and exhibit ultra high starting affinities and potencies without the need for further engineering.

The arGEN-X platform has the potential to rapidly create exciting product candidates both against novel therapeutic targets and against targets where standard antibody approaches fail to generate an optimal lead diversity.

Christina Takke, PhD, Principal at Forbion Capital Partners commented: "We are impressed with the quality of the arGEN-X management team, their solid business approach and outstanding achievements to date. The current financing round will allow arGEN-X to unlock the real value of its technology. Forbion is very pleased to support arGEN-X's future plans in the highly attractive monoclonal antibody space."

John de Koning, PhD, Partner at LSP continued: "We are impressed by arGEN-X's SIMPLE Antibody(TM) platform, its strong proprietary position and its ability to efficiently generate gold standard, human antibodies as demonstrated by the Company's lead program. We believe arGEN-X is well positioned to play an important role in tomorrow's human monoclonal antibody market."

Peter Verhaeghe, Chairman of the Board of arGEN-X added: "We are very pleased with this significant equity financing, one of the largest early stage investments in our sector in the past year. arGEN-X's ability to raise this significant financing from such a high quality investor syndicate in a very difficult financial market is a strong vote of confidence in and a testimony to the tremendous value creation potential of the Company and its Team. arGEN-X is now well positioned to execute its business plan over the next two years."