Novo Holdings has opened its investment proposal round to U.S. and Canadian life science companies for its anti-microbial resistance impact fund, REPAIR. The window for submissions will be open from 4 September to 11 October.
Copenhagen, Denmark, 4 September 2018 – Companies are now invited to submit a non-confidential proposal, which will be presented to the fund’s Scientific Selection Board and successful projects will be selected later in the year.
More than 700,000 people die each year from infections resistant to most or all antibiotics, and the number is increasing by the day. Such infections are projected to kill more people than cancer by 2050. Global economic output is expected to be reduced by between 2% and 3.5% and to severely cripple modern medical and surgical advances. For this reason, Novo Holdings created the REPAIR Impact Fund to confront this pending global medical catastrophe.
Novo Holdings launched the European proposal in April. It received 54 high-quality, innovative proposals, which showed great diversity of approaches to the scientific challenge of antimicrobial resistance. As of today, Novo Holdings is progressing 16 out of these 54 proposals to the final stage, and the best project will be announced separately in due course.
Aleks Engel, Partner at Novo Holdings and Director of the REPAIR Impact Fund, said: “We are delighted with the quantity and quality of proposals to the REPAIR Impact Fund received in the European round. Novo Holdings is proud to financially and strategically support the development of these projects which will have a meaningful impact on the future of society. We were able to attract the best companies in Europe and are optimistic that the same scientific prowess will be shown by companies in the U.S. and Canada”.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation is commissioning the REPAIR Impact Fund. Novo Holdings is managing the Fund.
About the REPAIR Impact Fund
The Fund will invest in start-ups, early-stage companies and corporate spin-outs in Europe and the United States. It will give priority to first-in-class therapies, covering small molecules, biologics and new modalities, from the early stage of drug development (lead optimization) to the early stages of clinical development (Phase 1). It can invest as the sole investor or in a syndicate, with investments ranging from USD 1 million to USD 15 million.
The projects will be selected through an investment process with support of a highly qualified Scientific Selection Board, comprising 10 world-class experts. For more information about members of the Scientific Selection Board, see www.repair-impact-fund.com/people.
The Fund will focus on priority pathogens as defined by the World Health Organization and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a catalogue of 12 families of bacteria that pose the greatest threat to human health. The list especially highlights the threat of gram-negative bacteria that are resistant to multiple or all antibiotics. For more details about the investment process, see www.repair-impact-fund.com/investment-process.
REPAIR is an acronym: Replenishing and Enabling the Pipeline for Anti-Infective Resistance.