Azafaros BV raises €25m in Series A round

The round was led by Forbion, with BioMedPartners and seed investor BioGeneration Ventures (BGV) co-investing. The Naarden-based 2018 spin-out company from the universities of Leiden and Amsterdam UMC said it will use the capital to further advance its pipeline of first-in-class small molecules to treat rare genetic metabolic disorders such as lysosomal storage diseases and orphan diseases of central nervous system (CNS).

“The Series A financing allows us to build our organisation and expand our executive team with passionate and experienced people and to advance our rare metabolic disorders pipeline,” stressed Olivier Morand, Chief Executive Officer at Azafaros. Azafaros has licenced a library of novel compounds discovered by Hans Aerts, Hermen Overkleeft, Stan van Boeckel, and co-workers at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry.

Upon the financing, Carlo Incerti, and Sander Slootweg, from Forbion; Vanessa King, as well as Andreas Wallnöfer, BioMedPartners, and Edward van Wezel from BGV Managing Partner joined Azafaros’ board of directors.

Azafaros small molecules include its lead compound AZ-3102 that might provide disease-modifying potential to treat lysosomal storage diseases such as Gaucher, Tay-Sachs, Fabry, Sanfilippo or Pompe disease. The azasugar compound interferes with the metabolism of glycolipids and targets diverse disease pathways.

Lysosomes are enzyme compartments where proteins, polysaccharides, nucleic acids, or lipids are digested. Dysfunctional lysosomes end in accumulation of cytotoxic accumulation of degradation products in the CNS, resulting in severe symptoms including developmental delays, seizures, respiratory infections, loss of vision and hearing, and cognitive functions.