Novo Holdings launches new funding round for AMR projects

The next proposal round of the Novo Holdings REPAIR Impact Fund is now open for life science companies developing new treatments to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

The proposal round is running from 1 April to 7 May 2021 and will take submissions from companies that have projects that are between lead optimisation and Phase 1 clinical trials.

Companies are invited to submit a non-confidential proposal, which will be presented to the fund’s Scientific Selection Board.  Successful projects will be selected later in the year. 

The €135 million funding round is Novo Holding’s sixth call for investment proposals since it was set up in 2018. To date, REPAIR has received over 200 investment proposals and has made nine investments in its commitment to help tackle the global AMR crisis. The REPAIR Impact Fund was set up to provide both funding and strategic support to accelerate the development of early-stage novel antibiotics towards the clinic.

Aleks Engel, partner at Novo Holdings and Director of the REPAIR Impact Fund, said: “AMR is very much the ‘other’ raging pandemic in addition to the all-pervasive Covid-19 crisis. It is a constantly mutating entity, currently killing at least 700,000 people every year. It is getting deadlier every year and may curtail most advances in modern medicine. Significant steps need to be made to develop new products and innovative methods for combating the healthcare crisis that AMR represents, and REPAIR is proud to be playing a pivotal role in helping companies do this.  So far we have invested in nine companies across Europe and North America and we are looking forward to hearing from companies with novel life-saving anti-microbials in early development.”