Immunovia receives SEK4.9 Million grant from Swelife Accelerator Innovation Program

The grant supports completion of the development studies of IMMray™ PanCan-d, the first blood-based test for early stage pancreatic cancer to enable increased possibility of successful surgical intervention.

LUND, Sweden ― Immunovia announced today it has received a follow-on grant of SEK4.9 million from the Swelife Accelerator Innovation Program to support the last development studies of IMMray™ PanCan-d - the first blood-based test for early detection of pancreatic cancer.  These studies are performed in close collaboration with CREATE Health Translational Cancer Center at Lund University.

The 3rd worst cancer in terms of mortality, pancreatic cancer continues to have one of the lowest survival rates if undetected – less than 2%. Currently early surgical intervention offers the best chances of survival, but diagnosis has proved difficult due to lack of suitable tests. IMMray™ PanCan-d employs novel antibody microarray technology and a unique biomarker signature panel to provide a rapid, robust and accurate solution to this pressing problem.

“We are delighted to receive this grant as we approach an exciting stage in the development of IMMray™ PanCan-d,” commented Mats Grahn, Immunovia CEO. “We have successfully established the largest ever multicenter trial to demonstrate IMMray™’s utility for hereditary and familiar risk groups with leading centers in the US and Europe. We now have the confidence to accelerate our activities to move into the commercialization program also for diabetes and early symptoms risk groups’ which this grant will support.”  

The Swelife Accelerator Program is designed to support Swedish SME’s and Immunovia is one of only 8 companies in Sweden who have been selected to receive grants. Swelife itself is a strategic innovation program, funded by the Swedish Government via the Swedish innovation agency, Vinnova, and collaborative partners in healthcare, academia and industry. More than 100 such organisations currently support Swelife (swelife.se/en/).

For more information, please contact: 

Mats Grahn

Chief Executive Officer, CEO, Immunovia

Tel.: +46-70-5320230

Email: mats.grahn@immunovia.com

CREATE Health

CREATE Health, a Strategic Center for Translational Cancer Research, was created to meet the need of Translational Research and Precision Medicine. CREATE Health was one of the first initiative in this area and was inaugurated in 2006.  The translation of basic discoveries to the clinic is often slow, expensive, and demanding as it requires multi-disciplinary collaborations involving basic researchers, clinicians, pathologists, patients, and regulatory bodies. The management of cancer in the clinics also remains a major challenge. Thus, the focus of CREATE Health is to address these problems using cutting-edge technologies to solve the clinical needs. CREATE Health has a multidisciplinary environment with researchers and clinicians from four different faculties, faculties of Engineering, Medicine, Natural Science and Social Science. (www.createhealth.lth.se)

About Immunovia

Immunovia AB was founded in 2007 by investigators from the Department of Immunotechnology at Lund University and CREATE Health, the Center for Translational Cancer Research in Lund, Sweden. Immunovia’s strategy is to decipher the wealth of information in blood and translate it into clinically useful tools to diagnose complex diseases such as cancer, earlier and more accurately than previously possible. Immunovia´s core technology platform, IMMray™, is based on antibody biomarker microarray analysis. The company is now performing clinical validation studies for the commercialization of IMMray™ PanCan-d that could be the first blood based test for early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. In the beginning of 2016, the company started a program focused on autoimmune diseases diagnosis, prognosis and therapy monitoring. The first test from this program, IMMray™ SLE-d, is a biomarker signature derived for differential diagnosis of lupus, now undergoing evaluation and validation. (Source: www.immunovia.com)

This information is information that Immunovia AB is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person set out above, on the date as shown above.

Immunovia’s shares (IMMNOV) are listed on Nasdaq First North in Stockholm and Wildeco is the company’s Certified Adviser. For more information, please visit www.immunovia.com.