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CURRENT INVESTMENTS

The below list includes all current portfolio companies managed by Fund+

Minoryx is a clinical stage biotech company leading the development of new therapies for orphan CNS diseases with a high unmet medical need. The company’s lead program is MIN-102, currently in clinical trials for X-linked Adrenoleukodystrophy and Friedreich’s Ataxia.

The Minoryx team is made up of a group of experts with several decades of experience in biotech and pharma. The company is backed by a syndicate of experienced investors and has support from a network of other organizations. Minoryx was founded in 2011 and has operations both in Spain (Mataró, Barcelona) and Belgium (Charleroi Brussels South Biopark).

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logo Astrivax

AstriVax is a privately held spin-off company from the KU Leuven, founded in 2022 based on vaccine technology developed at the Rega Institute. AstriVax is building a first in class Plug & Play vaccine platform with a patented plasmid based technology that launches self-amplifying live attenuated viruses inducing a vigorous and polyfunctional immune response. The versatile technology of AstriVax can be used to develop a wide range of vaccines to prevent and treat infectious diseases. AstriVax aims to address major challenges in vaccinology by developing novel vaccines that are easy to produce, have reduced cold chain requirements, and offer broad and long-lasting protection against various viruses and other pathogens. AstriVax will focus on bringing their thermostable yellow fever, rabies and cHBV vaccine to the clinical development stage, thus clinically validating the platform technology for prophylactic and therapeutic use. The company is located in the BioHub in Leuven.

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Coave Therapeutics (previously called Horama) is a clinical-stage biotech company that develops gene-therapy treatments, based on recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) vectors, targeting rare inherited retinal diseases.

Horama was founded in 2014 by a complementary team of world-renown academic researchers who conducted, in 2011, one of the first clinical trials of gene therapy applied to ophthalmology in France, including: Philippe Moullier, Christian Hamel (1955-2017) and Vasiliki Kalatzis, from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM); and Michel Weber and Guylène Le Meur, from the Nantes University Hospital in France.

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Immunic Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotech company founded in 2016 with a pipeline of selective oral immunology therapies aimed at treating chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Immunic, Inc. is headquartered in New York. Its subsidiary, Immunic AG, is based in Graefelfing near Munich, Germany, where the company’s research and development activities are conducted. Additional subsidiaries are located in Halle/Saale, Germany, and Melbourne, Australia.

Immunic is developing three orally available small molecule products:

  • Lead development program, IMU-838, currently is in phase 2 clinical development for COVID-19, relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis and, in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic, primary sclerosing cholangitis.
  • IMU-935 is an inverse agonist of the nuclear receptor RORγt and currently in phase 1 clinical development.
  • IMU-856 targets the restoration of the intestinal barrier function and currently is in advanced preclinical development.

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eTheRNA Immunotherapies is a clinical-stage biotech company applying mRNA- based immunotherapies to the treatment of cancer.

eTheRNA’s goal is to commercialize these immunotherapies to deliver long lasting clinical remission to cancer patients.

The company is a spin-off of the ‘Vrije Universiteit Brussel’ (VUB), based on proprietary research by Prof Kris Thielemans, and is backed by a strong international syndicate of investors.

eTheRNA’s TriMix platform comprises three mRNAs encoding proteins (caTLR4, CD40L and CD70) that work to deliver optimal activation of dendritic cells. These cells behave as immune response mediators and mobilize the immune system to attack cancer cells through inducing powerful T-cell responses.

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Novadip Biosciences, a biomedical spin-off company from the University of Louvain (UCL, Belgium) and its academic hospital, (Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc), is developing innovative solutions for critical tissue reconstruction. Using its proprietary technology platform for tissue engineering and manufacturing, Novadip is addressing the need for critical size bone and skin reconstruction in patients who currently have limited or no effective treatment options.

Novadip’s first product is being tested in a phase 1/2a clinical trial in spinal fusion patients. A second product, specifically designed for large bone defects, is currently enrolling patients with non-healing bone fractures (bone non-union) in a phase 1/2a clinical trial.

Novadip is also developing a regenerative skin product aimed at reconstruction of large skin defects or grafts and is using its technology platform to develop “off-the-shelf” products to address additional, larger clinical indications.

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Cellaïon is a Walloon biotechnology company created by a consortium of Belgian-Luxembourg investors. They are located in the biotech valley of the Walloon region in Belgium.

Their lead product HepaStem® is in advanced clinical development in Acute on Chronic Liver Failure (ACLF), a life threatening condition affecting more than 100,000 patients worldwide each year, with a 50% mortality.

Their pipeline also includes Acute Toxic Hepatitis, Acute Decompensation and Non Alcoholic Steato Hepatitis (NASH).

Their strong R&D program internally and  in partnership with universities and research centers  aims to  generate new products with specific targets in the field of inflammation and degenerative diseases.

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EPICS Therapeutics is a Belgian drug discovery and development company, incorporated in 2018 as a ULB spin-off, based on proprietary research performed in the lab of Prof Francois Fuks. EPICS develops innovative small molecules acting through novel RNA epigenetic targets for cancer treatment.

Recent discovery efforts targeting DNA and histone modifications have already given some of the most promising drugs to treat cancer. Modifications to RNA are much more common than to DNA, further highlighting the huge potential of using RNA epigenetics for therapeutic applications. By targeting RNA modifications, EPICS aims to translate science into life-changing therapies for patients.

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Confo Therapeutics is a drug discovery company building a unique pipeline of GPCR targeted therapeutics addressing unmet medical needs. The company was founded in 2015 as a spin-off from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and VIB and capitalizes on the ConfoBody technology developed by Prof. Jan Steyaert.

Confobodies are camel signle domein antibodies that stabilize distinct druggable conformers of flexible protein targets and reveal previously inaccessible structural features. Confo Therapeutics uses these ConfoBody-stabilized functional conformations of GPCRs as a superior starting point for drug discovery empowering the discovery of novel agonists for better therapeutic intervention.

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EyeD Pharma was created in 2012 on the initiative of Professor Jean-Marie Rakic (Head of the Ophthalmology Department at Liège University Hospital, CHU), together with a group of other ophthalmologists and a few private investors.
Currently, the company is developing an innovative drug delivery system based on a controlled-release intraocular implant.

EyeD Pharma is initially focusing on the treatment of glaucoma, an eye disease that mainly affects people over the age of 45. Traditionally, glaucoma is treated by administering eye drops every day for the rest of the patient’s life. This drug treatment is very burdensome and causes local side effects, such as eye irritation. If the patient is not treated or is inconsistent in taking the treatment, glaucoma is accompanied by irreversible degeneration of the optic nerve, resulting in loss of vision (second biggest cause of blindness in developed countries).

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LOGO_Ona-therapeutics-

Ona Therapeutics (Barcelona, Spain) is a biotech company that specializes in the discovery and development of therapeutic biologics targeting tumor metastatic-initiating cells and lipid metabolism. Founded in 2019 by Salvador Aznar-Benitah and Valerie Vanhooren, it was a spin-off from ICREA and Advanced Studies, and the IRB Institute for Research in Biomedicine.

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logo Indigo

Indigo Diabetes NV (Indigo) is a young high-tech medical device company founded by Danaë Delbeke and her team end 2016. Indigo develops the world’s first invisible sensor for people living with diabetes to address their need for accurate glucose monitoring with an improved user experience. Indigo exploits groundbreaking photonics technology that revolutionized the Internet during the last decades and now aims at transforming diabetes management. Indigo is based in Ghent, Belgium.

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logo Exevir Bio

ExeVir Bio, a spin out of VIB, the world-leading Belgium-based life sciences research institute, is harnessing its nanobody technology platform to generate robust antiviral therapies providing broad protection with a lead asset for COVID-19. ExeVir is developing treatments based on nanobodies for viral infections that may pose a significant global threat. It is developing a highly innovative and clinically validated technology based on nanobodies. Lead asset VHH72-Fc binds to a unique epitope of the spike protein expressed by a highly conserved region of the coronavirus genome, making it less likely that the virus develops resistance. This binding prevents the virus entering the cells.

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“Tubulis generates uniquely matched antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) through the combination of novel proprietary technologies and disease-specific biologic insight. Our goal is to expand the therapeutic potential of  protein-drug conjugates by increasing design flexibility while overcoming constraints of toxicity, efficacy, and indication. Tubulis will build new conjugates to fill its pipeline and will collaborate with partners to usher in a new ADC era and deliver better outcomes for patients.”

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logo Egle

Established in early 2020, as a spin-out of Institut Curie by Luc Boblet, serial biotech entrepreneur and Dr Eliane Piaggio, PhD, renowned immunologist in the Treg / IL-2 field (INSERM Research Director, Head of the Translational Immunotherapy Team – TransImm – at Institut Curie), Egle Therapeutics develops First-In-Class immunotherapies targeting immune suppressor regulatory T cells (Tregs) for oncology and autoimmune diseases. The key element of Egle’s core approach is the leveraging of its translational-based target discovery platform to unveil novel therapeutic Treg targets and computationally designed immunocytokines acting as antagonists or as selective Treg-agonists.

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logo Targed

TargED Biopharmaceuticals B.V. is a spin-off from the University Medical Center Utrecht founded in July 2020, that develops innovative biological drugs to improve the treatment of thrombosis. The company is developing a first-in-class proprietary clot-busting compound, Microlyse, for improved thrombolysis as a treatment for acquired thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (aTTP) and Acute Ischemic Stroke (AIS). The groundbreaking work demonstrates that Microlyse specifically targets blood clots leading to their dissolution faster and safer compared to the standard of care, recently featured on the cover of the journal Blood (Microlyse: a thrombolytic agent that targets VWF for clearance of microvascular thrombosis).

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