Birk Venture AS and Nextera AS announce signing of their second
investment agreement for further development of the drug discovery
company Nextera AS
Nextera is a drug discovery company based on a proprietary phage
display technology and with a focus on new therapies for autoimmune
diseases and formed by the investment company Bio-Medisinsk
Innovasjon AS (BMI), the inventors and Inven2 AS in August 2009. To
develop the technology Birk Venture, BMI and Olsen
Capital&Consulting invested late 2010 in a first share issue, followed
by a second share issue by Birk Venture and Olsen Capital&Consulting
in May this year.
Harald Dugstad, CEO in Nextera AS states that “this capital base
provides the opportunity to establish R&D in own laboratories, and
thus exploit our technology for the identification of novel drug targets
for treatment of diseases with large unmet medical needs. Nextera
presents a combination of a unique concept, a well-established
collaboration with world class researchers at Centre for Immune
Regulation (CIR), a good team and strong proprietary rights. The
ownership of Birk Venture and BMI also secure a strong business focus
and competence in the challenging field of drug discovery.”
Hans Ivar Robinson in Birk Venture comments; “Nextera is a company
with a unique technology that we are convinced will either in itself, or
through the products identified, draw significant attention from Big
Pharma.”