SmiLe alumni Acrivon AB’s US parent company Acrivon Therapeutics rings NASDAQ closing bell in New York

On December 14^th, Acrivon Therapeutics Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing precision oncology therapies, rang the closing bell at the NASDAQ in New York, after having raised $99 million in an IPO. The company is the parent company of SmiLe alumnus Acrivon AB, making it the first company that originated in the SmiLe Incubator to be listed on the NASDAQ.

Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc., is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing precision oncology medicines that it matches to patients whose tumors are predicted to be sensitive to each specific medicine by utilizing its proprietary proteomics-based patient responder identification platform, Acrivon Predictive Precision Proteomics, or AP3.

Acrivon Therapeutics Inc. is the parent company to Acrivon AB, an alumnus of SmiLe Incubator, originating in OncoSignature AB, a biotech start-up founded by Kristina Masson and Peter Blume-Jensen in 2016 and accepted as a SmiLe member in 2017.

Founded in 2018, the US company Acrivon Therapeutics Inc. has continued to further advance the unique technology, AP3, and develop a pipeline of oncology drug candidates. In 2021 the company signed a licensing agreement with the American pharmaceuticals company Eli Lilly and Company to further develop prexasertib, now called ACR-368, a drug candidate developed for platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, amongst others. Following a successful launch of the company’s unique technology platform and clinical pipeline for precision-based cancer medicine in the US in 2021, Acrivon Therapeutics raised $100 million in an oversubscribed series B round the same year.

“I want to express my warmest congratulations to the whole team at Acrivon Therapeutics for an amazing achievement. To see a company originating from SmiLe Incubator ring the bell at the NASDAQ in New York is a huge milestone. It is also testimonial to our ability as an incubator to produce high-quality life science companies that are able to attract international VCs and are successful on a highly competitive global market”, says Ebba Fåhraeus, CEO of SmiLe Incubator.

Acrivon Therapeutics Inc. is headquartered in Boston and the company currently employs 45 people across both sites. The Swedish operations were acquired in 2018, now active as Acrivon AB, the company’s Scandinavian hub where the early discovery research is largely conducted. Acrivon AB remains an alumnus of SmiLe Incubator.

“It´s been a great experience to build and grow the company to this point, in both Sweden and the US, and we are very excited about reaching this important milestone. We are also grateful for all the support received by the Incubator here in Sweden, and look forward to continuing our partnership” said Kristina Masson, co-founder of Acrivon Therapeutics Inc. and site head of Acrivon AB, the company’s subsidiary in Lund.

For more information, please contact: Ebba Fåhraeus, CEO of SmiLe Incubator, tel. +46 73 40 00 433, email: ebba@smileincubator.life