SmiLe company Acrivon AB's parent company Acrivon Therapeutics raises $ 100 million in a series B round led by Wellington Management Company and Surveyor Capital

Kristina Masson, CEO Acrivon AB

Following a successful launch of the company’s unique technology platform and clinical pipeline for precision-based cancer medicine in the US this summer, Acrivon Therapeutics now raises 100 million dollars in an oversubscribed Series B round led by American Wellington Management Company and Surveyor Capital.

Since its inception three years ago, biotech company Acrivon Therapeutics Inc. has been working in stealth mode to further advance its unique technology, AP3 (Acrivon Predictive Precision Proteomics), which enables the identification and validation of biomarkers that predict which cancer patients will respond positively to a particular treatment. Using AP3, the company is now investing in developing a pipeline of oncology drug candidates for the treatment of various types of cancer.

On October 11, 2021 the company announced that it has raised 100 million dollars in an oversubscribed Series B round. The financing was co-led by Wellington Management Company and Surveyor Capital (a Citadel company), with key participation from RA Capital Management and Perceptive Advisors. Additional new investors in the financing included Sands Capital, HBM Healthcare Investments, Marshall Wace, HealthCor Management, BB Pureos Bioventures, Acorn Bioventures, and existing investors, including Alexandria Venture Investments and Chione Ltd.

Prior to the Series B financing, Acrivon Therapeutics raised $20M in venture capital and signed a licencing agreement with the American pharmaceuticals company Eli Lilly and Company to further develop prexasertib, a drug developed for platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, amongst others.

”We are thrilled by the support from these notable investors, and look forward to the next steps for the company. We have strategically built the Swedish subsidiary around local expertise and well-developed infrastructure, here at the SmiLe incubator at Medicon Village and in proximity to our academic co-founder professor Jesper Olsen at Copenhagen University. These have been critical contributing factors to our success”, says Kristina Masson, co-founder of Acrivon Therapeutics Inc. and site head of Acrivon AB, the company’s subsidiary in Lund.

”I am very impressed by Acrivon’s success. The fact that they have been able to establish themselves on the US market and raise this much capital is a fantastic achievement that shows the international potential for Swedish start-ups. It also underlines the importance of SmiLe’s lab infrastructure where our cell and protein laboratories are instrumental for early companies in precision medicine”, says Ebba Fåhraeus, chief executive officer of SmiLe Incubator.

The subsidiary has its origin 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. The US company Acrivon Therapeutics Inc. was founded in 2018 and acquired the Swedish operations, now active as Acrivon AB, the company’s Scandinavian hub. The headquarters is located in Boston while the discovery research is largely conducted in Lund.

For more information:
Kristina Masson, president and site head, Acrivon AB Sverige, email: kmasson@acrivon.com,
Ebba Fåhraeus, chief executive officer, SmiLe Incubator, tel: +46 (0)73-4000433