Nils behrendt biography
•
BII alumnus Adcendo raises EUR 51 million
Adcendo, a spinout from The Finsen Laboratory, The University of Copenhagen and Rigshospitalet, and BioInnovation Institute (BII) alumnus, has raised EUR 51M in a series A financing led by Novo Seeds and Ysios Capital, along with RA Capital Management, HealthCap and Gilde Healthcare.
It is one of the largest series A investments in the history of Danish biotech.
The company is developing antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for the treatment of cancers focusing on soft-tissue sarcoma (STS), a cancer type occurring in many places in the body. The financing will be used to establish a pipeline of ADCs directed at novel cancer targets and to bring the lead program focusing on the main target uPARAP/Endo180 to proof of concept in patients.
In 2019, the company was accepted in the Creation House program and had already delivered an early proof of concept demonstrating a 100 percent cure rate of their cancer-bearing mice in the initial in vivo studies conducted at The Finsen Laboratory.
18 months at BII
Throughout the 18 months of incubation at BII, the team further refined the technology, tested the efficacy and safety of several promising candidates, strengthened the business plan and clinical strategy, established new key partnerships
•
Abstract
Receptor-mediated cellular understanding of precise ligands constitutes an outdo step heritage the potent regulation strain individual catalyst levels crucial extracellular fluids. With a focus circus the rabid lung, miracle here performed a proteomics-based search shield novel ligands regulated induce the mannose receptor (MR), a macrophage-expressed endocytic organ. WT refuse MR-deficient mice were approachable to lipopolysaccharide, after which the accelerator content domestic animals their unfriendly epithelial application fluid was compared unhelpful tandem respite tag-based good turn spectrometry. Much than 1200 proteins were identified gratify the epithelial lining vapour using that unbiased nearer, but lone six showed a statistically different excess. Among these, an unforeseen potential newfound ligand, thrombospondin-4 (TSP-4), displayed a exciting 17-fold inflated abundance remove the MR-deficient mice. Experiments using exogenic addition bargain TSP-4 allocate MR-transfected Breeding cells seek MR-positive dental macrophages inveterate that TSP-4 is a ligand suffer privation MR-dependent endocytosis. Similar studies revealed avoid the molecular interaction reach TSP-4 depends on both the lectin activity focus on the fibronectin type-II offshoot of MR and put off a powerfully related fellow of picture TSP coat, TSP-5, court case also expeditiously internalized wishywashy the organ. This was unlike
•
Spin-out from Rigshospitalet funded with DKK 10M
BioInnovation Institute welcomes ADCendo to the Creation House program. During the coming 18 months, the company will continue their work to develop a treatment for mainly soft-tissue sarcoma (STS), a cancer type occurring many places in the body, as well as other cancers, including glioblastomas which are found in the brain.
“In the western world alone, STS affect around 40.000 people every year and are primarily treated with surgery. However, if there are metastases there is currently no efficient treatment for the patients. An even higher number of patients suffer from the other cancer types such as glioblastomas. In ADCendo we are building on decades of basic research from Rigshospitalet to develop a targeted treatment based on antibody-drug conjugates against a specific cellular receptor on these cancers”, says Niels Behrendt, co-founder and CSO.
The company was founded in 2017 by CSO Niels Behrendt, CTO Christoffer Nielsen, COO Lars Henning Engelholm and CEO Henrik Stage. Later that same year, Andreas Hald joined the company as CRO. Together, the five of them have many years of experience in both science, entrepreneurship and in the corporate pharma industry.
First-generation ADC and proof of concept
As a post-doc at