Step Pharma SAS raises €35m in Series B

The financing round of the French drug development company was co-led by new investors Hadean Ventures and Sunstone Life Science Ventures with participation of Kurma Partners, Pontifax and Bpifrance, which reinvested through its Innovative Biotherapies and Rare Diseases fund and InnoBio 2 fund. As part of the financing, Jacob L Moresco from Sunstone Life Science Ventures and Walter Stockinger from Hadean Ventures will join the Step Pharma Board of Directors.
 
According to Step Pharma SAS (Archamps, France) the proceeds will be used to advance Step Pharma’s lCTPS1 inhibitor, STP938, into clinical development for the treatment of T-cell malignancies. In addition, Step Pharma will use the funding to advance development of CTPS1 inhibitors in other haematological malignancies and solid tumours.

The drug target, cytidine triphosphate synthase 1, is an enzyme that plays a critical role in DNA synthesis, cell division and proliferation but whose function is highly selective to certain cell types, in particular proliferating T cells. Cytidine nucleotide triphosphate (CTP) is a precursor required for DNA synthesis and cell division. Patients deficient in the enzyme CTPS1 have an altered immune cell proliferation response to immune challenge but no other deleterious effects. This same pathway supports the uncontrolled growth of cancerous T and B cells, thus inhibiting CTPS1 represents a novel precision oncology approach to specifically block proliferation and induce killing of cancerous cells in lymphoma and leukaemia. 
 
Step Pharma was founded in June 2014 by Kurma Partners, the Imagine Institute and Sygnature Discovery based on the scientific discoveries of Prof. Alain Fischer and Dr Sylvain Latour’s laboratory at the Imagine Institute, Paris.