~ LLS makes second equity investment in Kiadis Pharma for the Phase II development ~
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July 11, 2016 – Kiadis Pharma N.V. (“Kiadis Pharma” or the “Company”) (Euronext Amsterdam and Brussels: KDS), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative T-cell immunotherapy treatments for blood cancers and inherited blood disorders, today announces that its partnership with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), the world’s largest voluntary health agency focused on blood cancers, has been strengthened with a second equity investment by LLS into the development of Kiadis Pharma’s lead product ATIR101™.
LLS initially invested approximately US$1 million in February 2016 through an equity investment via its Therapy Acceleration Program (TAP), a strategic initiative to partner directly with biotechnology companies to help accelerate the development of promising therapies. This second investment will now also be used to finance Kiadis Pharma’s second ongoing Phase II trial in leukemia patients which the Company then intends to continue into a randomized controlled Phase III pivotal study on track to start later this year. The ongoing Phase II trial is investigating the repeated dosing of ATIR101™ as an adjunctive treatment to a T-cell depleted haploidentical hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) (donor cells from a half-matched related donor) in adult patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The trial (CR-AIR-008; NCT02500550 / EudraCT 2015-002821-20) is conducted under an IND of the United States Food and Drug Administration and is set up to enroll patients in the United States as well as other countries, including Canada, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom.
The second funding by LLS has taken place through an equity investment of approximately US$750,000 and a total of 67,020 shares will be issued to LLS.
Manfred Rüdiger, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of Kiadis Pharma, commented: “We are delighted that LLS has made another significant contribution to the development of our lead product ATIR101™ and invested further in Kiadis Pharma. This is again a strong sign of confidence in what we do and our goal remains to be to bring this important product to patients as quickly as possible.”
Louis J. DeGennaro, Ph.D., LLS’s President and CEO, added: “Kiadis Pharma’s ATIR101™ shows great promise in fighting life-threatening infections and graft versus host disease following stem cell transplantations. LLS is very pleased to be increasing its level of support for this program which we hope will improve outcomes for patients with blood cancers.”
