BioWorld International Correspondent

Early stage Danish biopharmaceutical firm Genesto A/S raised DKK40 million (US$4.86 million) in its first round of equity funding, from 3i plc, of London, and the Danish government's National Growth Fund.

Genesto, which was established in November 2000, had previously undergone a seed round and secured a soft-loan facility from the Growth Fund.

"We are in the discovery phase of our activities. This is obviously to reach a point where we have more data to work from," CEO and co-founder Simon Rye Clausen told BioWorld International. Copenhagen-based Genesto is keeping details of its discovery platform under wraps at present, however. "We are not very talkative about that," Clausen said.

The company is developing therapeutic antibodies for treatment of infectious disease. Last year, it entered a collaboration with Medarex Inc., of Princeton, N.J., based on the latter company's UltiMAb human antibody development technology. Genesto is responsible for developing and commercializing fully human antibodies that act on targets it supplies. Medarex will receive license fees, and potential milestone payments and royalties on eventual product sales.

Clausen, who has both a medical and business background, previously worked at the Danish subsidiaries of F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., of Basel, Switzerland, and Eli Lilly & Co., of Indianapolis, and at Novo Nordisk A/S, of Bagsvaerd, Denmark. The co-founder, Finance Director Troels Dalberg, also previously worked at Roche. The company employs just six people, and will add three or four more employees within the next year. "We never expected to be a large organization at this point," Clausen said.

The transaction represents the first biotechnology deal 3i has undertaken in the Danish market since establishing an office in Copenhagen in April 2001. "They made an impressive presentation to us. They have some very good ideas that made it interesting for us," said investment director Arne Gillin. 3i, he said, has seen about 100 projects in its first 12 months of operation in Denmark. "We are doing more," he said.