Cathera SA closes Series B round at €42m
Sorbonne University spin-out Carthera SA has closed its Series B financing round with an additional investment of €4.5m at €42m to launch clinical trials.
The Series B update was led by Unorthodox Ventures. Existing shareholders Supernova Invest, Saint-Genys and Bouscas Med also participated in the Series B financing round. Carthera announced it will use the proceeds to launch an open-label registrational trial of its innovative ultrasound-based medical device SonoCloud® to treat recurrent glioblastoma (rGBM ) and expand its pipeline in field of neurodegenerative diseases.
Within the comparative pivotal trial, the Paris-headquartered medical device specialist will evaluate overall survival in patients undergoing carboplatin chemotherapy and treated with the SonoCloud-9® system to open the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB). This will be compared to the standard of care (lomustine and temozolomide) in patients with first recurrence of GBM.
In parallel to the clinical trial, the funds will be used to develop the companys clinical and preclinical pipeline in the field of neurodegenerative diseases. Carthera is actively seeking to establish new research and clinical stage collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotech partners interested in using its SonoCloud technology to deliver their therapies to the brain.
SonoCloud emits ultrasound to temporarily increase the permeability of the blood vessels in the brain to improve the delivery of therapeutic molecules. Invented by Alexandre Carpentier and developed in collaboration with the Laboratory of Therapeutic Applications of Ultrasound (LabTAU, INSERM) in Lyon, France, SonoCloud is an implant inserted into the skull and activated prior to injection of a therapeutic agent. Several minutes of low-intensity ultrasound opens the blood-brain barrier for six hours and increases the concentration of therapeutic molecules in the brain. The device offers a new treatment option for a wide range of indications, including brain tumors and Alzheimers disease. However, the safety of the investigational use of SonoCloud has not yet been determined, the device has not yet received EMA or FDA approval.
