Amsterdam-based LUMICKS, a life science tools company, announced on Thursday that it has secured €20M in venture debt agreement from the European Investment Bank (EIB).
The European Commission backs the investment through the InvestEU initiative, which seeks to foster innovation projects and job creation across Europe.
The Dutch company will use the funds to launch its next-generation, high-throughput cell avidity platform.
“This investment from the EIB enables us to accelerate our R&D timeline, ensuring we continue innovating to deliver a long-lasting impact in the immunotherapy space” states Hugo de Wit, CEO of LUMICKS.
“By providing deeper insights into cellular interactions, our instruments empower researchers to make faster, better-informed decisions, to improve success rates in clinical trials, and accelerate the development of effective therapies,” adds de Wit.
LUMICKS: Accelerate drug discovery
Founded in 2014, LUMICKS aims to accelerate drug discovery in cancer research and advance the understanding of fundamental biological mechanisms at the molecular and cellular levels.
The company’s Cell Avidity technology is changing the way cancer immunotherapy is discovered by addressing a critical challenge: the lack of tools to directly measure the binding interaction of immune cells, such as CAR-T cells, with cancer cells.
This limitation creates uncertainties in the preclinical process and slows down therapy development.
By providing a high-throughput measurement of such interactions, the platform empowers researchers to optimise therapies faster and with greater accuracy.
By 2027, over 250 top researchers will use cell avidity and single-molecule data to develop treatments and understand biological processes, to impact over 1 million lives, claims the company.
Brief about the European Investment Bank
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the long-term lending institution of the European Union, owned by its Member States.
It makes long-term finance available for sound investment to contribute towards EU policy goals.
Over the last ten years, the EIB has made available more than €27Bin financing for Dutch projects in various sectors, including research & development, transport, drinking water, healthcare, and SMEs.
“The Netherlands is home to a vibrant Life Sciences industry and the EIB has been proudly supporting this sector to ensure it continues to lead in medical innovation and transformative healthcare solutions,” states EIB vice president Robert de Groot.
“The new financing to LUMICKS is a testament to this. With the backing of InvestEU, the EIB can provide LUMICKS with stable long-term funding matching the highly innovative profile of the Company and tailored to its current needs for continued growth, market expansion, and development of its technologies.”
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