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Successful IPO with MedUni Vienna patent

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Börsengang mit MedUni Wien-Patent

(Vienna/Stockholm, 16 June 2016) Swedish company Cyxone, a subsidiary of ACCEQUA AB, headquartered in Malmö, recently went public – on the basis of a MedUni Vienna patent application relating to the potential development of an oral medication to combat multiple sclerosis. The invention "Cyclotides as immunosuppressive agents " is the work of Christian Gruber from the Center for Physiology and Pharmacology and Carsten Gründemann from Freiburg University Hospital and was patented and commercially exploited by theMedUni’s Technology Transfer Office (TTO).

“We are delighted to see a MedUni Vienna patent that we have out-licensed being so successful. This demonstrates once again that the excellent scientific work done by our colleagues can also give rise to innovative start-ups," says Michaela Fritz, Vice Rector for Research and Innovation at the Medical University of Vienna, speaking on the occasion of the meeting of Cyxone’s Management und Scientific Advisory Board in Vienna on Wednesday. Project Manager Christiane Krcal from the TTO and Christian Gruber from MedUni Vienna are both members of this board.

The IPO on the Swedish stock exchange – whereby share packages of two shares and two option certificates each were issued – was more than 500% oversubscribed, reports Gruber. The company has now raised 2.5 million euros in share capital to fund a Phase I clinical study. "This means that the company can fund all the steps it has planned up until 2017," says the MedUni Vienna researcher.

With plant peptide to combat MS
At the beginning of the year, Christian Gruber was voted "Inventor of the Year 2015" at MedUni Vienna: the invention relates to the development of an active agent that can be administered in tablet form to treat multiple sclerosis. Gruber and his colleagues demonstrated in an animal model that, following treatment with a special synthetic plant peptide (cyclotide), there was no progression of the usual clinical signs of MS.

The results of this study were published in the leading journal "PNAS" in March 2016 (doi:10.1073/pnas.1519960113) and offer hope that the disease can be arrested at a very early stage or, at the very least, its progression can be greatly retarded.

» Press Release: "Multiple sclerosis: plant peptide could prevent onset of the disease"