Aarhus, Denmark-based Teitur Trophics, a biotech company, announced on Tuesday, March 14, that it has secured €28M in a Series A round of funding co-led by Sunstone Life Science Ventures and Sound Bioventures.
New investors Industrifonden, Innovestor’s Life Science Fund, and P53 Invest also participated in the round.
Teitur says the funds will enable it to advance its lead drug candidate, TT-P34, from candidate selection into clinical development, including a Phase 1b clinical study in neurodegenerative diseases.
As a part of the funding round, the company also announced that Charles Large will continue as Chairman of the Board at Teitur.
Meanwhile, Søren Lemonius, Casper Breum, Fredrik Lehmann, Milla Koistinaho, and Susanne Stuffers will join the Teitur Board of Directors.
Teitur Trophics: Treating neurodegenerative diseases
Teitur Trophics was founded by Simon Molgaard, Anders Dalby, Mathias Ollendorff, and Simon Glerup as a spin-off of Aarhus University seeded by the BioInnovation Institute (“BII”) in 2020.
Teitur Trophics is developing treatments for patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s Disease, Frontotemporal Dementia, and Huntington’s Disease.
The Danish company has developed a first-in-class circular peptide with a novel mechanism that preserves neuronal function.
According to Teitur, the lead drug candidate, TT-P34, is administered subcutaneously and has shown potent, brain-specific effects in animal models for Huntington’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, and Frontotemporal Dementia.
TT-P34 was developed from “the sortilin-related Vps10p domain-containing receptor (“SorCS2”) receptor.”
It targets three major pathophysiological hallmarks of neurodegeneration: mitochondrial failure, lysosomal dysfunction, and loss of pro-survival signaling.
TT-P34 uniquely restores energy homeostasis in brain cells, induces clearance of toxic protein aggregates, and promotes neurotrophic effects.
Simon Mølgaard, Chief Executive Officer of Teitur Trophics, says, “The funding will allow us to take our first-in-class, lead drug candidate, TT-P34 from candidate selection into clinical development, while also advancing our novel pipeline of innovative peptides.”
The Investors
Sunstone Life Science Ventures is an independent European venture capital investment managing total funds of €500M.
The VC focuses on developing and expanding early‐stage Life Science companies with strong potential to achieve global success in their markets.
Søren Lemonius, General Partner at Sunstone Life Science Ventures, says, “Our passion is to enable and empower therapeutic innovation that can improve patient outcomes, and we believe Teitur’s cyclic peptides is yet another excellent example of the breakthrough science coming out of the Scandinavian biotech ecosystem.”
Sound Bioventures is a biotherapeutics-focused venture fund that invests in about-to-be clinical or clinical-stage companies in Europe and USA.
Casper Breum, Managing Partner at Sound Bioventures, says, “We are proud to support such an innovative Company that has the potential to make a meaningful impact against neurodegenerative diseases and improve the quality of life of patients, and we look forward to supporting the Company through its next stage of growth.”
