Gedea Biotech receives Vinnova funding and strengthens board of directors

SmiLe company Gedea Biotech has been granted SEK 900,000 through Vinnova’s initiative to support innovate startups. The company also expanded the board of directors by hiring Mats Persson, who has over 30 years of experience from marketing and sales within the life science field. This addition of valuable expertise will strengthen the board in market and licensing deals.

Gedea Biotech will receive an additional SEK 900,000 from Vinnova from the second phase of the call for applications for innovative startup companies.

“Vinnova’s demonstration of faith in our product and our team is extremely valuable. This funding will carry us all the way to the start of our clinical study,” says Annette Säfholm, CEO of Gedea Biotech.

The new member of the board of directors is Mats Persson, who has more than thirty years of experience from marketing and sales within the pharmaceutical industry. He was previously the CEO of Astellas Pharma Nordic for 13 years, which manufactures and markets treatments within urology and infectious diseases. Before that he held executive positions in sales and marketing at Novo Nordisk, Pharmacia, Ferring and Astra Hässle. He currently also serves on the boards of directors at Nordic Rebalance A/s and Europe Pharmapartners AB.

“Strengthening the board of directors with the addition of Mats Persson and his extensive experience of marketing and licensing is important because we expect to have a product on the market in two to three years,” says Annette Säfholm.

Gedea Biotech is developing a treatment for vaginal infections, an area of indication for which current treatments usually do not have adequate effect and for which problems with resistance are associated with the therapies. Many women suffer from recurrent vaginal infections without being cured.

Gedea Biotech’s substance is safe, naturally occurring, and approved as a food additive. It works in a completely new way by attacking the infection deeper in the tissue. Moreover, it does not kill the infection, but crowds it out – and therefore does not cause resistance. The treatment will undergo clinical trials in 2018 and the funding granted by Vinnova will take the project through to clinical practice. The company’s first product is expected to be on the market in two to three years.

The company is based on an interdisciplinary team from Lund University, consisting of Ulf Ellervik and Sophie Manner, both chemists at Lund Institute of Technology, Lund University, Helena Strevens, specialist in obstetrics and gynecology at Skåne University Hospital, and researchers at the Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, as well as Olov Sterner, a chemist at the Faculty of Science. Lund University’s holding company LU Holding is a partner. 

 

Gedea is a company in the SmiLe incubator, an incubator that helps life science entrepreneurs with business coachning and laboratory facilities. www.smileincubator.life

 

 

For more information, please contact:

Annette Säfholm, CEO
Phone: +46 (0) 708- 91 86 81
Email:annette.safholm@gedeabiotech.com 

Gedea Biotech is developing a safe antibiotic-free treatment of vaginal fungal infections. Gedea Biotech’s substance, GA101, is a natural product that has always been part of our surroundings. It works through a new mode of action that does not kill the fungus, but instead prevents the development of biofilm and thus prevents the fungus from becoming established in and infecting the vagina. GA101 is now being formulated into a local treatment of vaginal fungal infections.

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