Caixa Capital Risc (CCR) has led a financing round of 27.3 million euros in the Belgian biopharmaceutical company AbolerIS Pharma, which will place its investment in companies in the health sector above 100 million euros, approximately half of its portfolio, as explained by Pablo Cironi, director of CCR's biomedical sciences area and its Criteria Bio Ventures fund.
AbolerIS is a firm that develops a treatment for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Cironi explained that the investment in AbolerIS responds to the new strategy that the firm has initiated to focus on therapeutic treatment companies, leaving those of medical devices or diagnostics. For this reason, it has begun a process of divestment of investees, which will be reduced from more than 20 “to 7 or 8.”
Likewise, the group is going to focus on more mature companies, even if they require greater investment, leaving investments in initial phases to CaixaImpulse, “an initiative of the La Caixa Foundation with a more philanthropic than business approach,” Cironi acknowledges.
This strategy increases the initial investment in each project, which is now between 1 and 10 million euros, “which we increase if the project advances and has potential, because being part of a large group we do not have the requirement to diversify the portfolio much. ”, he highlighted. CCR manages more than 200 million euros and is part of the CriteriaCaixa group, the largest investment holding company in Spain, with more than 25,000 million euros in assets.
In AbolerIS, Caixa Capital Risc has co-invested with Sound Bioventures, SFPIM, Wallonie Entreprendre, Sambrinvest, Sudinvest. Already existing investors have also participated in the round: Newton Biocapital and Turenne Capital.
The resources from the round will allow AbolerIS to accelerate the clinical development of its new drug, a monoclonal antibody that targets the CD45RC receptor, a new therapeutic target, and which has the potential to establish a new standard treatment for various autoimmune diseases.
