Gene therapy newco Vivet raises €37.5M

Vivet Therapeutics (Paris, France), a newco developing gene therapies, raised €37.5 million ($40.8 million) in a series A round led by Novartis Venture Fund and Columbus Venture Partners. Also participating were Roche Venture Fund, HealthCap, Kurma Partners and Ysios Capital.

In 2018, the company expects to begin clinical testing of lead program VTX801 to treat Wilson’s disease, in which excess copper accumulates in the body. The candidate uses a modified adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector to deliver a truncated functional version of the ATPase Cu++ transporting beta polypeptide (ATP7B) gene into liver cells carrying the defective gene...