Gimv invests EUR 4.25 million in Dutch biotech company Prosensa

Gimv invests EUR 4.25 million in the series B funding round of Dutch biotech company Prosensa (www.prosensa.eu). Together with AGF (France), Gimv acted as a co-lead investor in a total financing round of EUR 18 million. The existing investors Abingworth (UK), LSP (Netherlands) and Medsciences Capital (Netherlands) also participated in this capital increase.

Founded in 2002, Prosensa mainly focuses on the treatment of neuromuscular diseases. It uses a unique and revolutionary licensed technology platform that makes use of so-called exon skipping for correcting mutated RNA. The company primarily targets the Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) disorder, against which it has already developed two products that are currently in clinical phase I / II.

DMD is a serious neuromuscular disease resulting in muscle weakness. The disorder is caused by mutations of the DMD-gen, which is responsible for a lack of the dystrophin protein that is essential to the integrity of muscle fibre membranes. The disorder appears during infancy and is found with 1 in 3,500 newborn boys. The young patients suffer from a progressive loss of muscle strength. Most patients are wheelchair dependent by age twelve and most of them die as young adults due to breathing and cardiac disorders. So far no treatment has been found to stop this fatal disease.

Prosensa is the eighth shareholding of the Gimv Life Sciences team in its Benelux home market. The other seven companies are Ablynx, Actogenix, Galapagos, Movetis, Pamgene, Pronota and Thrombgenics.

More information on Prosensa can be found in the attached press release.