Capella Bioscience Completes Series A Financing of £11 million ($15.5 million) to Progress Antibody Pipeline

LONDON, March 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Capella Bioscience Ltd. announced today the close of a £11 million ($15.5 million), Series A financing round. The round was financed by Advent Life Sciences, Medicxi Ventures, and Osage University Partners. The new capital will support continued advancement of the company's novel therapeutic antibody discovery programs towards clinical evaluation.

"We are delighted to receive this support from a strong and knowledgeable syndicate of investors to progress our development programs," said Steve Holmes, COO of Capella. "In addition to providing significant financial resources, these experienced investors bring Capella a wealth of operational, medical, and industry expertise along with key relationships that will serve the company well during this important stage of growth and development."

 "Our investment to support the development of antibodies against a variety of high value targets at Capella is based on strong scientific research, combined with an experienced and capable drug development team," commented Raj Parekh of Advent Life Sciences. "We look forward to working with the Company to translate its research into important new medicines."

In connection with the financing Bill Harrington of Osage University Partners will join the Board in an observer role.

Notes to editors: 

About Capella Bioscience, Ltd. 

Capella received seed funding from Advent Life Sciences LLP and Medicxi Ventures to employ proprietary technologies to discover, develop and commercialise monoclonal antibody medicines to difficult and novel drug targets. For more information, visit the company's web site at http://www.capellabioscience.com/.

About Advent Life Sciences LLP 

Advent Life Sciences founds and invests in early- and mid-stage life sciences companies that have a first- or best-in-class approach to unmet medical needs. The investing team consists of 16 professionals, each with extensive scientific, medical and operational experience, a long-standing record of entrepreneurial and investment success in the US and Europe, and is particularly focused on supporting entrepreneurs and founders to take innovative new medical entities from concept to approval. The Firm invests in a range of sectors within life sciences, principally drug discovery, enabling technologies and med tech, always with an emphasis on innovative, paradigm-changing approaches. Advent Life Sciences has a presence in the UK, US and France. For more information, please visit http://www.AdventLS.com.

About Medicxi Ventures 

Medicxi Ventures is a life sciences focused venture capital, recently spun out of Index Ventures. One of Europe's largest dedicated life sciences VC firms, Medicxi Ventures has offices in London, Jersey and Geneva. Past and existing portfolio companies include for example GenMab (Copenhagen: GEN.CO), PanGenetics (acquired by Abbott), Minerva Neurosciences (Nasdaq: NERV), Egalet (Nasdaq: EGLT), Molecular Partners (Swiss: MOLN. SW), Versartis (Nasdaq: VSAR), Levicept, XO1 (acquired by J&J), MorphogenIX, and Gadeta. For more information, please visit us at MedicxiVentures.com and connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About Osage University Partners 

Osage University Partners is a venture capital firm focused on investing in start-ups that are commercializing cutting edge university technologies. Osage partners with top research universities to invest in their most innovative start-ups, and Osage shares its investment profit with its partner institutions.  The firm invests in both technology and life science companies at early and late stages of company development. Osage has partnered with over 70 universities and has invested over 40 of their spinouts.  Osage University Partners is part of a family of investment funds within Osage Partners, which is based in Philadelphia, PA and manages in excess of $400 million.  For more information, please visit http://www.osageuniversitypartners.com.

Media contacts:
For more information, please contact:

Steve Holmes, Chief Operating Officer, Capella Bioscience
Email: steve.holmes@capellabioscience.com
Phone: +44(0)7747-845906

Katja Stout, Director, Citigate Dewe Rogerson
Email: katja.stout@citigatedr.co.uk
Phone: +44(0)207-282-1066