AbilityPharma receives a 1.6 million euro grant from the FDA and opens a crowdfunding campaign in Capital Cell

The Catalan biopharmaceutical company AbilityPharma, focused on the development of innovative oral anticancer compounds, undertakes the last stage of the investment round with which this year it will raise a total of 9.2 million euros for fund his research for a pancreatic cancer treatment based on the development of a new antitumor compound.

Last March, the company obtained 5 million euros from the Horizon 2020 Pilot Program, European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator; (Of this figure, 2.8 million will be a direct investment in the company's capital, managed through an EIB fund). In parallel, the US FDA just awarded a 1.6 million euro ($ 1.9 million) grant to AbilityPharma for the clinical development of this molecule. Likewise, AbilityPharma finalizes the signing of an agreement with an international industrial partner that will contribute 1 million dollars in this phase.

Finally, and to complete the development of the clinical study, AbilityPharma begins a campaign to raise 1.6 million euros in the collective investment platform Capital Cell.

During 2018 and 2019, AbilityPharma attracted 4.4 million euros from investors such as Inveready, Fitalent (Everis Group), private investors through Capital Cell, the founding partners and public funds of the CDTI. In total, since its founding in 2009, Ability Pharma has achieved a total of 13.8 million in financing, of which 6.5 in capital, 2.7 in public aid and 4.6 in credits, in addition to payments for milestones of technology partners.

With these investments, AbilityPharma accelerates the process to advance the validation of its new investigational molecule. The company, based in Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona), has developed an innovative molecule, ABTL0812, capable of transforming the paradigm of first-line treatment of pancreatic cancer. This new molecule causes selective autophagy of cancer cells without affecting healthy cells. ABTL0812 has been positively tested in phase 2 clinical trials, as first-line therapy in patients with endometrial cancer or squamous lung cancer, in Europe.

AbilityPharma's next goal is to conduct an international multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 2 clinical trial in pancreatic cancer to investigate ABTL0812 in combination with FOLFIRINOX chemotherapy. The study will include reference centers in Spain, France, other European countries, Israel and the United States.

Upon completion of the clinical trial in 2022, AbilityPharma's goal is to establish a license agreement with a multinational pharmaceutical company to further develop ABTL0812, with the aim of making it available to pancreatic cancer patients by 2024 and further developing it for others. types of cancer.