Inficure Bio attract millions
“Attracting new investment allows us to move faster. We have lots of potential customers and we want to launch new applications for our product”, says Sofia Mayans, CEO of Umeå-based Inficure Bio.
Inficure Bio, which operates from the Umeå Biotech Incubator, has developed a process that makes it easier and faster for pharmaceutical companies to test drugs that treat fibrosis, and in particular the presence of scar tissue in organs. Scar tissue occurs when the organ is damaged and a common cause of organ damage is inflammation of the tissue. Fibrosis can, for example, occur in a fatty liver, where constant inflammation can create large amounts of fibrosis, which in turn can cause the organ to stop functioning.
Local venture capital was injected into the company in the autumn of 2017 with the help of Northern Light Capital and Partnerinvest Norr. Now a new funding round is underway with the same investors.
The company says taking in more capital will enable it to validate additional applications for the product more quickly and therefore help boost sales.
“With our unique model pharmaceutical companies can test how effectively their treatments work with liver fibrosis – and soon they’ll even be able to test the effectiveness of drugs for other types of fibrosis, such as fibrosis of the kidneys. Fibrosis contributes to around 40 percent of all deaths in the western world and there are no effective drugs to treat it on the market yet – so interest in our company has never been greater”, says Sofia Mayans.
“We are extremely excited to invest in a local and competitively aggressive company like Inficure Bio. We see it developing in a positive direction with great potential to reach international markets,” says Andreas Christiansen at Northern Light Capital.
Inficure Bio was the only company in Västerbotten to receive SEK 2 million in investment from Vinnova in the call ”Innovationsprojekt i företag” in the spring of 2019, when at the same time it signed the largest contract in its history with Swiss company Vifor Pharma.
“The future looks bright and we have lots of potential customers”, says CEO Sofia Mayans, who founded the company together with Dan Holmberg.