Alizé Pharma 3 bags largest EU financing so far

The oversubscribed financing into the specialist for rare endocrine hormone dysbalances was led by Life Sciences Partners’ (LSP) LSP 6 fund with contributions of new investors Innobio2, Kurma Partners, Novo Ventures, OrbiMed Advisors, Partners Innovation Fund and Pontifax, as well as existing investors Crédit Agricole Création, Sham Innovation Santé/Turenne Capital, and TAB Consulting.

Lyon- and Boston-based Alizé Pharma 3 wants to use the proceeds to push two existing preclinical programmes towards Phase IIb proof-of-concept and add a third programme to its pipeline – a difference to the asset-orientated model of Alize Pharma SAS spin-outs 1 and 2.

AZP-3601 is a parathyroid hormone (PTH) analog, designed to treat hypoparathyroidism, that was licensed from the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. AZP-3404 is a small peptide, originally licensed from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Maine, that was pharmacokinetically optimised to leverage the biology of insulin-like growth factor-binding protein-2 (IGFBP2) in order to treat extremely rare syndromes of severe insulin resistance.

LSPs plan is to enable Alizé Pharma 3 to become a fully-fledged biotech company with several interesting assets in the endocrine space.