Corteria Pharmaceuticals Announces Closing of €12M Seed Financing to Advance Portfolio Assets

For immediate release – December 9, 2021

Paris, France, December 09th, 2021 – Corteria Pharmaceuticals, a French biotechnology company specialized in the development of interceptive therapies for heart failure subpopulations, today announced the successful completion of its Seed round, providing €12 million to pursue the development of a series of programs in-licensed from Sanofi S.A. (Paris,France). The seed round was led by Kurma Partners and includes V-Bio Ventures, Omnes and Invivo Capital. As part of the financing, Thierry Laugel (Chair) and Peter Neubeck from Kurma Partners, Ward Capoen from V-Bio Ventures, Claire Poulard from Omnes and Luis Pareras from Invivo Capital will join the Board of Directors. Heart failure continues to progress despite current standard of care, affecting more than 60M patients worldwide. Corteria’s R&D programs will address the full spectrum of heart failure decompensation and offer opportunities for developing transformative therapies for the
treatment of worsening and acute decompensated heart failure.

“Congestion is the main cause of repetitive hospitalization and poor quality of life in heart failure patients. Using a multi-parametric strategy, the present development programs will follow very closely our patients to assess severity of congestion and benefits of those novel therapies in worsening heart failure” said Alexandre Mebazaa, Professor at Université de Paris (France).

“We are proposing a new way for developing drugs in heart failure subpopulations through innovative patient stratification strategy and a better understanding of the human disease biology. In that respect, target selection has been based on the existence of human pharmacology and biomarkers to monitor target engagement in heart failure patients”, said Philip Janiak, founder and CEO of Corteria, and former head of cardiovascular research at Sanofi.
www.corteriapharma.com

“We are particularly excited to have nurtured Corteria in close working relationship with Philip and his team. Heart failure represents an incredible medical need, that requires medical and pharmacological innovation as well as better patient stratification. We believe Corteria is very well equipped to address these challenges”, said Thierry Laugel, chairman of the Board of Directors.

Marie-Laure Ozoux, co-founder will serve as a CSO in supporting the research effort toward drug candidate selection.

Corteria’s scientific advisory board will be chaired by Pr. Alexandre Mebazaa, and includes Pr. Adriaan Voors (University Medical Centre Groningen, The Netherlands) and Pr. Frank Ruschitzka (University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland).

Kurma Partners
Founded in 2009 and based in Paris, Kurma Partners is a key European player in the financing of innovation in Healthcare and Biotechnology, from pre-seed to growth capital, in particular through its funds Kurma Biofund I, II, III and Kurma Diagnostics and Kurma Diagnostics 2, as well as the links the company has forged with a network of prestigious research institutes and hospitals.
www.kurmapartners.com

V-Bio Ventures
V-Bio Ventures is an independent venture capital firm specialized in building and financing young, innovative life science companies. V-Bio Ventures was established in 2015 and works closely with Belgium-based VIB, one of the world’s premier life science institutes. The fund invests throughout Europe in start-up and early-stage companies with high growth potential focusing on technologies that provide transformational improvements in the biopharmaceutical, pharmaceutical, diagnostics and agricultural sectors.
https://v-bio.ventures

Omnes
Omnes is a leading private equity and infrastructure investor. With €5 billion in assets under management, it provides companies with the capital they need to fund their growth, in three key areas: venture capital, growth & buyout capital and infrastructure. Omnes is wholly-owned by its employees. It is committed to ESG factors and has founded the Fondation Omnes to fund initiatives in favour of children and young people. It is a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI).

Invivo Capital
Invivo Capital Partners is a Spanish venture capital firm founded by Dr. Luís Pareras and Albert Ferrer, which manages Invivo Ventures FCR, venture capital fund that invests in life-science companies at an early stage. Invivo Ventures FCR has a majority of private investors with the support of a number of institutional investors such as the European Investment Fund (EIF), Fond-ICO Global, the Institut Català de Finances, the Institut Valencià de Finances and the Ajuntament de Barcelona.
https://invivo.capital/

Media relations :