Denali Ventures - In The News

Gamida-Cell raises $9.75 mln from existing investors

Aviva Mishmari
30.09.2001 17:45


Biotechnology company Gamida-Cell announced today that it has completed a $9.75 million financing round from existing investors. Participants included Elscint BioMedical, Denali Ventures LLC Fund, Bio-Technology General (Nasdaq: BTGC), and French venture capital firm Auriga Partners. Gemida-Cell announced that it is conducting advanced negotiations to raise an additional $6 million from "a number of international venture capital funds."

The company value for the round was not disclosed, but is estimated at $20 million, before money. Assuming the second round is completed, the company value will reach $36 million, after money.

Last February, Elscint BioMedical invested $7 million in Gamida-Cell, at a company value of $14 million, after money. Earlier, Gamida-Cell raised $2.5 million in its first financing round.

Gamida-Cell president and CTO Avi Treves told "Globes" that money from the current financing round will be used to develop the company's first product, hemopoiteic stem cells, intended for bone marrow transplants. Clinical trials of the product are scheduled to start early next year, and Gamida-Cell is aiming to market a product by the end of 2005.

Gamida-Cell has 28 employees and a subsidiary in the US. The company's technology is designed to reduce transplant rejection through the use of very early stem cells that are not identified by the body's immune system as foreign bodies. The main market is cancer patients undergoing radiation treatments. Treves said that the bone marrow transplant market for myeloablative conditions is $1 billion a year.

Gamida-Cell's technology allows multi-fold expansion of hemopoietic stem cells outside the body with minimal differentiation, which other technologies do not provide. The company is focusing on developing hemopoietic stem cells originating in the umbilical cord, which are designed to reduce rejection of bone marrow transplants.

Six months ago, it was announced that Gamida-Cell would operate an umbilical cord blood bank, financed by Elscint BioMedical, but the bank will open only early next year. Cells of patients will be deposited in the bank, in order to greatly shorten the waiting list for bone marrow transplants.

Sources in Elscint BioMedical said at the time that 20,000 blood types would be held in the bank, which would meet the needs of 70% of existing transplant needs in the global market. Treves envisions "transplants by order. A doctor can pick up the phone and receive cells developed and produced by our production line within 24 hours."

Published by Israel's Business Arena on 30 September 2001