Skip to main content

Investors stump up 3.7 million Swiss francs in Onena Medicines

| News

Investors stump up 3.7 million Swiss francs in Onena Medicines

03.11.2023

Onena Medicines has secured an investment of 3.7 million Swiss francs. The portfolio company of the biotech startup incubator BaseLaunch will therefore be able to drive the development of its antibodies designed to influence the growth of tumors.

Onena Medicines has raised a total of 3.7 million Swiss francs as part of a financing round. The venture capital has been provided by the Basel-based asset management firm Avanteca Partners and Zürcher Kantonalbank, the cantonal bank of Zurich. The biopharmaceutical firm Onena, which is headquartered at the Main Campus of Switzerland Innovation Park Basel Area in Allschwil in the canton of Basel-Landschaft, is a portfolio company of BaseLaunch, the biotech startup incubator active within the Basel biotech cluster.

Onena has a pipeline of promising antibody medicines to treat cancer, which neutralize a new class of growth factors called dual SMAD inhibiting proteins (DSIPs) that are responsible for programming the cancer cells to grow and induce resistance to chemotherapy. “Our partners realize, as we do, the incredible opportunity that lies before us to lead the AI drug discovery field”, comments Neethan Lobo, CEO and co-founder of Onena Medicines, in a press release.

Efficacy already shown

Onena intends to put the investment towards its efforts to provide in vivo proof of concept with its most advanced DSIP program (OMED-2). This is a first fully human antibody that targets an as yet undisclosed DSIP target protein. The company believes this has the potential to impact solid tumors such as melanoma.

Onena’s flagship OMED-1 program has already shown efficacy in breast, colorectal and glioblastoma preclinical models in vivo. Onena uses its deep learning pipelines to humanize and optimize the binding affinity of its lead molecules.

Share this article

Sign up to receive our newsletter in your inbox.

You may also be interested in

The power of a persuasive pitch deck

Are you an entrepreneur striving to secure investment for your biotech startup? Start with an effective pitch deck to catch...
Read More

Roche investing an additional 1.2 billion Swiss francs in Basel

Roche will be putting an additional 1.2 billion Swiss francs towards the renovation of its site in Basel. This investment...
Read More

Nouscom secures 67.5 million euros in financing

Biotech company Nouscom has raised 67.5 million euros in a series C financing round. The Basel-based firm intends to use...
Read More

Celebrating six months of innovation: i4Challenge accelerator New Ideas 2022/2023

On the 5th of July 2023, the 3rd iteration of the i4Challenge accelerator program New Ideas came to its conclusion....
Read More

How open innovation in healthtech hubs is fueling the rise of digital healthcare

How the ever-increasing uptake of digital solutions is enhancing patient engagement, increasing access to care and lowering the cost of...
Read More

How to access the U.S. market with your medical device

In one of our latest Venture Mentoring events by Basel Are Business & Innovation, we invited Nila-Pia Rähle to speak...
Read More

Do you have a question? We'd like to hear from you.