HighLight Capital, a venture capital (VC) firm with substantial investments in China’s healthcare sector, has joined a list of global investors in backing clinical-stage radiopharmaceutical company NUCLIDIUM AG’s Series B funding round that raised 79 million Swiss Francs ($99.5 million).
Switzerland-based NUCLIDIUM, which is developing a proprietary copper-based theranostic platform for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, announced on Thursday the completion of its Series B round from lead investors including Kurma Growth Opportunities Fund, Angelini Ventures, Wellington Partners, and Neva SGR (Intesa Sanpaolo Group).
DeepTech & Climate Fonds (DTCF), Bayern Kapital, Vives Partners, Eurazeo, and NRW.BANK, as well as existing investors, joined the round.
The proceeds will be used to advance the clinical development of NUCLIDIUM’s copper-based theranostic pipeline across multiple oncology indications. In parallel, the company will expand its production and manufacturing capabilities.
Founded in 2017, NUCLIDIUM is leveraging copper isotopes – Copper-61 for diagnostics and Copper-67 for therapeutics – in its creation of a differentiated platform with the potential to overcome existing limitations in radiotheranostics, such as suboptimal clinical efficacy and complex manufacturing.
The company said that early therapeutic data from its two lead compounds, NuriPro™ and TraceNET™, show strong tumour-to-background ratios in metastatic prostate cancer and neuroendocrine tumours, including breast cancer.
With this financing, NUCLIDIUM will continue expanding its worldwide production and manufacturing network for diagnostics and therapeutics, growing its international team, and strengthening strategic collaborations with hospitals and academic centers, initially across Europe and North America.
“NUCLIDIUM is entering the next clinical phases with its lead compounds to diagnose and treat metastatic prostate, neuroendocrine tumours and breast cancer,” said Leila Jaafar, CEO and co-founder of NUCLIDIUM.
Daniel Parera, MD, partner at Kurma Partners; Regina Hodits, PhD, managing director at Angelini Ventures; and Liliana Nordbakk, partner life sciences at Neva SGR, will join NUCLIDIUM’s board of directors, according to the statement.
