Wilson Therapeutics has issued new shares on Nasdaq Stockholm, raising a total of SEK 244M (€24.4M) to help bring its Wilson’s disease treatment to the market.
Stockholm-based biotech Wilson Therapeutics has closed a share issue that seems to have generated quite a high demand. The company’s main shareholders, Abingworth and MVM, had to sell SEK 156.75M (€15.7M) of their own existing shares to meet the demand. In total, the company has raised a total of SEK 244M (€24.4M).
The funds raised will mainly be used to fund the clinical development of the drug WTX101 and get ready for its commercialization as a treatment for Wilson’s disease. Additionally, the company wants to explore the potential of the drug in other indications, including ALS.
Wilson’s disease is a rare genetic disorder that affects copper metabolism, leading the metal to accumulate in the body and cause severe damage, especially to the liver and the nervous system. Current treatments are not effective in 45% of patients and can have severe side effects such as lupus or myasthenia.
Wilson Therapeutics wants to develop WTX101 as a better treatment alternative. The drug’s active ingredient is bis-choline tetrathiomolybdate, a molecule that binds copper in a way that helps the body excrete it. WTX101 has successfully completed a Phase II clinical study, where it showed to reduce copper concentration in patients with Wilson’s disease by 72%.
Meanwhile, in France, Vivet Therapeutics is developing a gene therapy aimed at providing a functional copy of the gene encoding for the copper transport protein ATP7B, which is missing or mutated in patients with Wilson’s disease. This approach has the potential to offer long-term effects with a single dose, but it still hasn’t been tested in humans and it might take a while until it makes it to the market.
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