09. December 2020

ARQIS has advised Emergence Therapeutics AG, a European life sciences startup, on its bumped-up follow-on seed round financing. The capital is coming from a syndicate of leading European investors comprising Bpifrance through its InnoBio 2 fund, Gründerfonds Ruhr, Heidelberg Pharma Research GmbH, High-Tech Gründerfonds, idinvest Partners, Kurma Partners and NRW.Bank. The follow-on seed round was led by High-Tech Gründerfonds and included support from the first pillar of the German Federal Government’s Euro 2 billion package of measures for start-ups.

Jack Elands, CEO of Emergence Therapeutics said: “We are grateful for the continued support from our investors at this seed stage. The proceeds from the Follow-on Seed Round will be used to continue the development of our lead program targeting Nectin-4, an increasingly important and clinically validated target for a broad range of cancers. Moreover, the funding enables us to expedite work on further programs as well as expand our ADC toolset with additional, highly innovative linker-payload technologies.”

Emergence Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company developing novel antibody drug conjugate (ADC) immuno-therapeutics to treat high-need cancers. Its lead program uses innovative linker technology and payload technology to target Nectin-4 – an important and validated target for a broad range of cancers. Furthermore, Emergence is actively exploring opportunities to develop further best- or first-in-class ADCs driven by therapeutic need. Emergence is based in Duisburg, Germany with a subsidiary in Marseille, France.

The ARQIS team around partner Dr. Christof Alexander Schneider already started advising Emergence Therapeutics in 2019, when the start-up was founded through a cooperation between, inter alia, the University of Marseille and Heidelberg Pharma AG. Thereupon, the ARQIS team organised the preceding financing round.

Advisors to Emergence Therapeutics
ARQIS Rechtsanwälte: Dr. Christof Alexander Schneider (Lead Partner; Transactions; Düsseldorf), Dr. Mauritz von Einem (Tax); Associate: Louisa Theresa Graf (Transactions; both Munich)

Niitväli (Frankfurt): Evelyn Niitväli (Antitrust)