With ra­dio­ther­a­py en vogue, Bel­gian start­up nabs near­ly $42M in Se­ries A fund­ing

In­ter­est in tar­get­ed ra­di­a­tion treat­ments was buoyed last month with No­var­tis’ $NVS $2.1 bil­lion bet on En­do­cyte that put the spot­light on a decades-old class of drugs in the lu­cra­tive field of on­col­o­gy. Bel­gian ra­dio­ther­a­py de­vel­op­er Camel-IDS has cashed in on the re­newed en­thu­si­asm with a €37 mil­lion (about $42 mil­lion) Se­ries A round, led by V-Bio Ven­tures and Gimv.

The com­pa­ny, which was spun off Vri­je Uni­ver­siteit Brus­sel (VUB) and in­cor­po­rat­ed in 2014, de­vel­ops nov­el ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals us­ing sin­gle do­main an­ti­body frag­ments de­rived from camelids — a fam­i­ly of mam­mals that in­cludes camels and lla­mas — la­beled with ra­dioiso­topes. In this class of drugs, the ra­dioac­tive agent is tak­en up in the can­cer­ous tu­mor and the ra­dioac­tive tox­ins are specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed to de­stroy the af­fect­ed tis­sue, ver­sus chemother­a­py, which does not dis­crim­i­nate be­tween mu­tat­ed tis­sue and healthy cells.

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