Maat Pharma announced completion of EUR 18 million round B financing

Editor's note: the impact of microorganisms on human health is much greater than we think Cancer, autoimmune diseases, food allergies, and obesity are all inextricably linked Some scientists call the microbiome the "second genome" of the human body Today, Maat Pharma, headquartered in Lyon, France, announced the completion of the EUR 18 million (US $20 million) round B financing to promote the further clinical development of its microbiome candidate drugs for the treatment of blood cancer and expand it to the treatment of other solid tumor indications It is worth mentioning that this round of financing attracted the support of American investment agency symbiosis, a company focusing on the investment field of microbiology Microbiome refers to all microorganisms in and out of the body, including bacteria, fungi, viruses, etc There are thousands of microorganisms in human intestine, which constitute the main body of human microbiome In the human body, the number of microorganisms is about 10 times that of human cells, while the number of microbial genes is more than 100 times that of human genes The ecosystem of human microbiome affects many biological processes, which makes its balance very important for human health Maat's proprietary Maat microbiome repair biotherapy (mmrb) technology aims to develop effective biotherapy for patients around its data collection and analysis platform gutprint and its unique drug production quality management specification (CGMP) platform Gutprint data science platform can better clarify the mechanism of ecological imbalance and symbiosis The data available include: biological target, therapeutic characterization, mechanism of action, and patient data CGMP platform has also proved its potential to reconstruct intestinal bacterial symbiosis after chemotherapy Photo source: Maat Pharma website Maat013, the main candidate drug developed by Maat company, is a enema drug with rich microbial species, and its formula comes from the results of strict review of the intestinal ecosystem of healthy people The funds will be used to complete the ongoing phase 2 clinical trial Heracles, which aims to verify the safety and efficacy of maat013 in the treatment of patients with steroid refractory acute graft-versus-host disease (sragvhd) after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo HSCT) Last year, Maat published data on maat013's treatment of eight GVHD patients in the compassionate use program These patients have previously received up to five systemic treatments The results showed that 8 patients experienced partial remission after maat013 treatment, and 3 patients achieved complete remission In addition, the funds will be used for the development of maat013 oral preparation (i.e maat033) and the initiation of phase 1b clinical study of maat033 Recent studies have shown that the rebalancing microbiome can significantly improve the clinical efficacy of checkpoint inhibitors, and Maat will also study this therapeutic potential in trials for solid tumor patients Preliminary data on the phase 1b safety and dose validation test of maat033 are expected to be released in the second half of this year reference material: [1] MaaT Pharma Announces €18 Million Series B Financing Round to Support Further Clinical Development of Microbiome Biotherapeutics，Retrieved February 05，2020，from https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200205005290/en [2] MaaT bags €18M to test microbiome modulators in cancer patients，Retrieved February 05，2020，from https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/maat-bags-eu18m-to-test-microbiome-modulators-cancer-patients