smartbax Announces Seed Financing of €1.2 Million to Develop Next-generation Antibiotics
smartbax, a biotech company developing next-generation antibiotics against multi-drug resistant bacteria, announced the close of its seed financing round of €1.2 million from Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF) and High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), bringing smartbax’s total capital raised to €1.9 million. The funds will be used to advance smartbax’s small molecule antibiotics through preclinical studies, expand the company’s scientific team to further develop its innovative research platforms and identify novel solutions against multi-drug resistant pathogens. In contrast to classical anti-bacterial approaches, smartbax’s product candidates act via a unique, double-targeted mechanism of action. This not only inhibits essential processes in the energy metabolism of multi-resistant bacteria, but also creates a stimulation of the bacteria’s protein secretion, which leads to a self-digest of the cells.
smartbax was founded in 2021 by Dr. Robert Macsics, Marco Janezic, and Prof. Dr. Stephan Sieber and was supported by BIVF with a first pre-seed financing of €700,000. The company’s scientific foundation is based on revolutionary research derived by Prof. Dr. Sieber’s research group from the Technical University of Munich. The research was awarded the VIP+ validation prize by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as well as the m4 award by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy.
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