PIQUR closed third seed financing round and received Eurostars grant

The oversubscribed private placement of PIQUR included new investors from the life science sector as well as existing shareholders. Vladimir Cmiljanovic, CEO and co-founder of PIQUR commented: “We are delighted to have attracted so much interest to enable us to complete our financing so quickly. The financing gives us the means to start with the clinical development program and to bring our lead compound PQR309 one step closer to become an excellent targeted cancer drug.”

In addition PIQUR was recently awarded a substantial grant from Eurostars for the further development of its front-runner compound PQR309. The Eurostars Programme is a European Joint Programme dedicated to the R&D performing small and mid-sized enterprises, and co-funded by the European Communities and 33 EUREKA member countries. PIQUR applied for the Eurostars project jointly with WIL Research Europe (Netherlands). In Switzerland the project will be funded by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation and in the Netherlands by the NL Agency. Cmiljanovic commented: “This is an excellent and encouraging result and another confirmation for our vision to develop PQR309 to an important cancer treatment”.

Management team extended with multi-disciplinary and international specialists
During recent months the management team has been extended by the appointment of an experienced Business Development & Licensing industry expert, Mr. Hervé Girsault. PIQUR’s management team now consists of the following members:

• Dr. Vladimir Cmiljanovic, Chief Executive Officer

• Dr. Doriano Fabbro, Chief Scientific Officer

• Frances Betts, Chief Development Officer

• Prof. Dr. Richard Herrmann, Chief Medical Officer

• Gaudenz von Capeller, Chief Financial Officer

• Hervé Girsault, Chief Business Development & Licensing

Cmiljanovic commented: “We have further strengthened our leadership team by top experts with outstanding track records in business and science. Our management team now assembles a multi-disciplinary and international team of specialists from every relevant discipline”.

To turn cancer into a manageable disease
The aim of PIQUR’s activities is to turn cancer into a manageable disease. Given the relatively small number of effective cancer treatments available today, there is an unmet medical need for new therapeutic approaches. One in every two men and one in every three women, living in the developed world, will develop cancer at some stage in their lives. PIQUR targets the PI3K (phosphoinositide 3-kinase) and mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) pathways.

PIQUR’s differentiation is the level of innovation with its unique, proprietary fragment and scaffold libraries as well as cellular technology platform and their excellent products with novel, dual-acting ‘strong PI3K plus finely-tuned weaker mTOR’ inhibitors that address the given challenges, meeting therapeutic, tolerance and galenic needs.

About PIQUR
PIQUR is a Swiss pharmaceutical company incorporated in August 2011 as a spin-off of the University of Basel focusing on the discovery and development of innovative anti-cancer drugs based on lipid kinase (PI3K) and mTOR inhibition. PIQUR’s pipeline originates from one of the most promising research areas in oncology. While mTOR is a clinically validated drug target, PI3K inhibition achieved proof of concept status in clinical phase III. PIQUR has a secured patent scope protecting many chemical compounds.