This is the next biotech hope for investors

Frankfurt Andreas Bergmann has been driving this goal for many years to reduce the mortality of patients in intensive care units. Sepsis is one of the big topics on which the doctor of biochemistry has been researching for more than three decades. This overreaction of the body’s own defense system to an infection can lead to severe functional disorders of the internal organs and ultimately to death.

“In Germany 80,000 people die of sepsis every year. We have set ourselves the goal of developing a drug that significantly reduces this mortality, ”says the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of the biotech company Adrenomed.

Years ago, Bergmann set standards in the diagnosis of blood poisoning, as sepsis is colloquially known. The now 59-year-old discovered the blood biomarker that indicates sepsis and developed corresponding laboratory tests that have become the new diagnostic standard in the care of sepsis patients. At that time, Bergmann was still co-founder and head of research at the diagnostics company Brahms, which he and his colleagues sold to the US group Thermo Fisher in 2009.

In order to develop a therapy against sepsis, Bergmann and the founding team of Brahms launched the company Adrenomed in the same year. The company’s drug candidate, a so-called monoclonal antibody called adrecizumab, has so far been successfully tested in humans in the first two clinical study phases. Now Bergmann and his colleagues are preparing the crucial approval-relevant study on the effect of the agent in septic shock.

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In venture capital circles, Adrenomed is currently one of the hopes that could make the leap into the top league of the biotech industry. This was the result of a recent survey by the Handelsblatt among leading venture capitalists. Matthias Kromeyer, General Partner of MIG Verwaltungs AG, which is not invested in Adrenomed, sees the mechanism of action against sepsis developed by Adrenomed as promising. He also rates positively that the antibody is an advanced clinical product.

Promising market

For the investors, one of the things that counts is that the company has developed an innovative approach that is geared towards an “unmet medical need”, i.e. diseases that cannot be treated or cannot be treated satisfactorily.

There is also a promising market: “Adrenomed is developing a therapy that addresses one of the largest markets in medicine,” says Rainer Strohmenger, Managing Partner of Wellington, a venture capitalist who has been investing in Adrenomed for years. In Germany alone there are an estimated more than 400,000 cases of sepsis each year.

In addition, Adrenomed scores with investors with the experience of its founders, most of whom are series founders. Bergmann, for example, built up the diagnostics company Sphingotec in addition to Brahms and Adrenomed. The company with around 80 employees develops and sells diagnostic tests for intensive care medicine, for example for diagnosing, monitoring and controlling acute kidney failure, heart failure and septic shock.

“Andreas Bergmann is an incredibly committed scientist who has set himself the goal of penetrating the topic of sepsis,” says Strohmenger from Wellington. Bergmann is the author of numerous scientific publications and now holds well over a hundred patents. Around two dozen diagnostic tests that he has developed are currently in use on the market.

The main reason people die from sepsis is the loss of what is known as endothelial function. The endothelium is a small skin that lines the inner side of the blood vessels and keeps them tight. This skin becomes holey as a result of infection or inflammation. Then a hormone called adrenomedullin is released, which enables this tube to be repaired. The hormone also regulates the permeability of the blood vessels, for example so that immune cells can leave the blood in the event of an infection. If this mechanism gets out of joint and lets all vessels open, to put it simply, the blood pressure collapses, organs are undersupplied, fail – and the patient dies.

The active ingredient in Adrenomed ensures that the endothelial barrier is stabilized – within a few minutes. The antibody binds to the hormone adrenomedullin, which, in simple terms, makes the hormone too large to cross the blood vessel barrier.

Since not all cases of sepsis can be traced back to the loss of endothelial function, but can also have other causes, Bergmann and his Sphingotec team have developed special diagnostic tests. In this way, the patients in whom the active ingredient of Adrenomed can be used sensibly can be filtered out in a targeted manner.

International study in planning

At the end of last year, the company raised around 22 million euros in a Series E financing round with the participation of the existing investors Wellington Partners and HBM Healthcare Investments. The team is now looking for additional donors to finance the approval-relevant study.

“Our current plan is to set up an international study that is running in the US, Europe and China. We will include up to 1,000 patients in this. The financing requirement for such a study, including the production of the drug candidate, is in the three-digit million range, so we are now looking for investors, ”says Frauke Hein, co-founder and Chief Business Officer at Adrenomed.

If everything goes as planned, the first patients could be included in the study from the second half of next year. “We are currently planning a recruiting period of around two years, then we will need around a quarter of a year to have the so-called top-line results. And only then do we know whether we have achieved our goal, ”says Bergmann.

If successful, it would take around 15 years from the founding of the company to the approval of the active ingredient. “You have to be patient when it comes to drug development,” says Hein.

More: Biotech hype thanks to Biontech: Investors are pumping more than three times as much capital into German companies.

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