Korean fund to invest in Enlivex Therapeutics at $100m value

Shai Novik Photo: Eyal Yitzhar
Shai Novik Photo: Eyal Yitzhar

Enlivex is developing a treatment for Graft-versus-Host disease (GvHD) resulting from bone-marrow transplants.

Enlivex Therapeutics Ltd., which is developing a treatment for Graft-versus-Host disease (GvHD) resulting from bone-marrow transplants, has announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for a $10 million investment led by South Korean investment fund KIP at a company value of $100 million, after money. KIP led an $8 million financing round in Enlivex at a company value of $50 million, before money, in September 2017. According to the MoU, KIP will invest $2 million, Hadasit Bio-Holdings will invest $1.2 million, and the two concerns will help recruit additional investors for Enlivex.

Under the terms of the MoU, the investment will take place if an additional sum of at least $6 million more is raised. Hadasit, which has a 19.2% stake in Enlivex before the new investment, has a NIS 45 million market cap. Following the financing round in September, Enlivex executive chairperson Shai Novik, former president of PROLOR Biotech, sold to Opko Health, said that the company was planning a significantly larger public or private financing round. As early as 2014, when Novik became chairperson, he reported the company's intention of holding a private placement, followed by a Nasdaq IPO, but the offerings market closed and reopened to companies of this type only this year.

It seems Enlivex still feels unready for this market, preferring a private financing round at this stage. The shares that KIP receives in the current round are protected in various ways against the possibility of Enlivex holding a share offering at a lower value.

KIP previously invested in Israeli companies Kahr (also founded by Hadasit) and Eloxx (listed on Nasdaq at a $286 million company value).

Enlivex's product has not yet undergone Phase III clinical trials. According to the company's statement during its September 2017 financing round, the product can enter these trials within a year.

Enlivex's product reduces the immune system's activity. In graft-versus-host disease, the new immune system transplanted into the patient is liable to attack the patient's body, which is identifies as a foreign object. Its activity must therefore be controlled until it becomes accustomed to its new environment.

Enlivex said that it would continue development of the product for other diseases linked to unwanted activity by the immune system. For example, the product is likely to prove suitable for treatment of sepsis - a systems collapse caused by the body's response to a severe infection (in case of a group A severe streptococcal infection).

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 23, 2018

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2018

Shai Novik Photo: Eyal Yitzhar
Shai Novik Photo: Eyal Yitzhar
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