Mestag extends seed financing to $45m with new backers

Mestag Therapeutics in Cambridge, a breakthrough inflammatory disease and immuno-oncology company, has closed an oversubscribed seed round extension to take the total to $45 million. 

The extension of $34m was led by Amsterdam-based investment firm Forbion together with global healthcare investors GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Northpond Ventures and supported by founding investors SV Health Investors, and Johnson & Johnson Innovation. 

In connection with the extended financing, Juliette Audet (Forbion), Issi Rozen (GV) and Shaan C. Gandhi (Northpond Ventures) will join the Mestag board.

Proceeds from the financing allows Mestag to further its mission of developing impactful new medicines for patients by targeting activated fibroblast populations and interrupting their role in influencing immune effector cells in disease. 

Fibroblasts are supportive cells resident within tissues which may become activated in disease. Analysis on a cell-by-cell level has identified subpopulations that play a key role in sustaining and propagating disease in cancer and inflammatory disease.

The extended financing enables Mestag to progress its pipeline of first-in-class antibodies towards the clinic, whilst simultaneously discovering new targets. 

Mestag recently announced a target discovery, option and license agreement with Janssen Biotech, Inc. to leverage Mestag’s platform and data analytics to identify novel therapeutic targets.

Mestag CEO Susan Hill said: “The growing Mestag team continues to make tremendous progress in this exciting and fast-moving new field. We are thrilled to welcome leading EU and US investors Forbion, GV and Northpond Ventures to our company.” 

Mestag’s mission is to develop impactful new medicines for patients by targeting activated fibroblast populations and their role in influencing immune effector cells in disease. 

Powerful new technologies enable diseased tissues to be analysed at a single-cell level and this work has uncovered discrete fibroblast cell sub-populations shared across diseases, acting as ‘immune sentinels’ in perpetuating, and progressing disease.

Mestag is progressing a pipeline of first-in-class therapeutics to interrupt fibroblast-mediated effects on immune cells in inflammatory disease and cancer.

Mestag’s founding investigators comprise leading experts in inflammatory disease, cancer, computational biology and fibroblast biology.