Munich/Amsterdam, 15 September 2014. It is with great pleasure that today, LSP – the specialist European healthcare investment firm – announces that its portfolio company Affimed was successfully listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange on Friday September 12 under the ticker “AFMD” after the successful pricing of 8 million new shares, at $ 7.00 per share. In addition, Affimed has granted the underwriters an option to purchase up to an additional 1.2 million common shares from Affimed at the public offering price.
LSP financed and actively supported Affimed since 2007, when LSP co-led the company’s Series B financing round. Since that investment, the company has transformed from a unique technology platform company into a clinical-stage product company, focused on discovering and developing highly targeted cancer immunotherapies. Affimed's product candidates are being developed in the field of immuno-oncology, which represents an innovative approach to cancer treatment that seeks to harness the body's own immune defenses to fight tumor cells. The most potent cells of the human defense arsenal are types of white blood cells called Natural Killer cells, or NK-cells, and T-cells. Affimed's proprietary, next-generation bispecific antibodies, called TandAbs for their tandem antibody structure, are designed to direct and establish a bridge between either NK-cells or T-cells and cancer cells, triggering a signal cascade that leads to the destruction of cancer cells.
The Affimed investment further validates LSP’s long-term approach of identifying break-through technologies, building companies around them and playing an active role all along. Jörg Neermann has represented LSP on the company’s Board and has worked closely with management and other Board members to steer Affimed towards this important event in the history of the company.
The IPO of Affimed further enriches LSP’s track record, which was already validated by several recent trade sales such as Sapiens to Medtronic, Activaero to Vectura, Okairos to GSK, Movetis to Shire, U3 Pharma to Daiichi Sankyo, Syntaxin to Ipsen, Pasteuria to Syngenta, Flowcardia to Bard, BMEYE to Edwards, Kudos to AstraZeneca, Jerini to Shire and DNage to Pharming, as well as the IPOs of arGEN-X, Celladon, Prosensa and Zealand Pharma. In the majority of these cases, LSP was lead and founding investor. These exits have allowed the growth of LSP as a firm.
About LSP:
LSP (Life Sciences Partners) is a leading independent European investment firm, providing financing for private and public life-science companies. Since the late 1980s, LSP’s management has invested in a large number of highly innovative enterprises, many of which have grown to become leaders of the global life-science industry. With over USD 1 billion of investment capital raised to date and offices in Amsterdam, Munich and Boston, LSP is one of Europe’s largest and most experienced specialist life-science investors. For more information, please visit www.lspvc.com.
Jörg Neermann
Partner
+ 49 89 330 666 0