French Carthera closes €37.5m Series B financing round

A prominent (undisclosed) investor led the round alongside the European Innovation Council Fund (EICF) and existing investors including Panakès Partners, Relyens Innovation Santé (Turenne Santé) and Supernova Invest with its Supernova 2 fund. Carthera will use the proceeds to initiate the first multi-centre pivotal study of its SonoCloud technology.

Carthera’s SonoCloud is an implantable ultrasound device that temporarily opens the blood-brain barrier on demand. Its excellent feasibility and safety profile has been demonstrated with multiple therapeutic agents in repeated sonication procedures. The recent publication in Lancet Oncology by a team of researchers from Northwestern (Chicago, Illinois) demonstrated the ability of SonoCloud-9 to significantly increase the penetration of therapeutic molecules into the brain. The goal is to improve the efficacy of chemotherapy in brain tumour patients when used in conjunction with SonoCloud BBB opening.

Carthera is currently in the process of submitting its pivotal trial in recurrent glioblastoma (GBM) to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and EU regulatory authorities. The trial will be an international, multi-centre, two arm, 1:1 randomised trial. It will be an open-label, comparative, pivotal study to evaluate the clinical benefit, in terms of overall survival, of the SonoCloud-9® system when used to open the blood-brain barrier (BBB) following administration of carboplatin chemotherapy. This will be compared to standard of care (lomustine and temozolomide) in patients with first recurrence of GBM. Last year, the FDA granted Carthera a Breakthrough Device Designation for the SonoCloud.

“Having treated more than 100 patients in Europe and the US with the SonoCloud system, with almost 500 treatments performed, it is a great achievement for Carthera to be able to further explore the benefits of opening the BBB with ultrasound with the financial support of renowned investment funds,” said Professor Alexandre Carpentier, Head of the Department of Neurosurgery at AP-HP Sorbonne University, inventor of the SonoCloud and founder of Carthera.

Founded in 2010, Carthera has offices in France (Lyon and Paris) and a subsidiary in the United States (Boston). Since its creation, the technical and clinical development of the SonoCloud has been supported by the National Research Agency (ANR), the French public investment bank (Bpifrance), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the European Innovation Council (EIC).

©EBM