Berlin — SMP advi­sed early-stage inves­tor 42CAP on its invest­ment in Vien­nese biotech startup Allcyte. As lead inves­tor of an inter­na­tio­nal inves­tor consor­tium, 42CAP inves­ted toge­ther with Air Street Capi­tal (UK), Amino Coll­ec­tive (Germany), VP Venture Part­ners (Switz­er­land) and PUSH Ventures (Austria) in the course of the growth financing.

Allcyte, which specia­li­zes in cancer therapy, has so far used its process to treat blood cancers. Howe­ver, accor­ding to the company, expan­sion to other cancer types is alre­ady plan­ned. “Instead of trying to extra­po­late infor­ma­tion from DNA, we’re taking actual cancer cells and test­ing directly on them to see what works,” Niko­las Krall, co-foun­der and CEO of Allcyte, told U.S. Fortune maga­zine. For the multi­tude of rapidly perfor­med “micro­ex­pe­ri­ments,” the startup uses AI image reco­gni­tion to deter­mine how cells respond to each drug.

“It is fasci­na­ting to see how alre­ady today in modern cancer therapy the use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in inter­ac­tion with biome­di­cine can help to directly deter­mine and in this way maxi­mize the degree of effi­cacy of diffe­rent treat­ments and to speci­fi­cally advance drug deve­lo­p­ment,” says Jens Kretz­schmann. “We hope that this invest­ment has laid the foun­da­tion for further revo­lu­tio­nary succes­ses of the company in the fight against cancer,” adds Frede­rik Gärtner.

42CAP recei­ved legal and tax advice from an SMP team led by Frede­rik Gärt­ner, Jens Kretz­schmann, and Martyna Sabat. Previously, SMP assis­ted the venture capi­ta­list in a number of finan­cing rounds as well as in the launch of its second venture capi­tal fund generation.

About 42CAP
42CAP inves­tors Alex Meyer and Thomas Wilke invest very early in young compa­nies with global ambi­ti­ons. They built one of Europe’s largest SaaS compa­nies them­sel­ves with eCir­cle and sold the profi­ta­ble company to Teradata (NYSE:TDC) in 2012. The 42CAP credo Peers amongst Entre­pre­neurs reflects their invest­ment approach to support data and tech­no­logy-driven busi­ness models, product-driven foun­ders and sustainable busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment. This back­ground is appre­cia­ted by foun­ders such as Nico­las Reboud (SHINE, Paris), Inigo Ijuan­tegui (Ontruck, Madrid) and Alex­an­der Igels­böck (Adve­rity, Vienna).

Allcyte
Allcyte is a biotech startup based in Vienna. Using AI-assis­ted image analy­sis, Allcyte has deve­lo­ped a method to gene­rate actionable insights into the func­tional acti­vity of drugs and drug candi­da­tes directly in viable, primary tissue samples from human cancer pati­ents at the single-cell level. The company thus enables physi­ci­ans to treat cancer pati­ents with the most promi­sing drug at the right time, when clas­si­cal gene­tics-driven precis­ion medi­cine fails to provide precise answers. It also enables phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies to select the most promi­sing drug candi­da­tes for clini­cal deve­lo­p­ment in the right pati­ent popu­la­ti­ons to maxi­mize clini­cal trial success rates and pati­ent bene­fit. Allcyte star­ted in 2017 as a spin-off of the Vienna-based CeMM Rese­arch Center for Mole­cu­lar Medi­cine. Foun­ded by Berend Snij­der, Gregory Vladi­mer, Niko­laus Krall and Giulio Superti-Furga, the company curr­ently employs around 30 people.

About SMP
SMP is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax and tran­sac­tions. SMP’s attor­neys and tax advi­sors repre­sent a wide variety of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity/venture capi­tal funds. Since its foun­da­tion in 2017, SMP has become one of the leading addres­ses for venture capi­tal, private equity and fund struc­tu­ring in Germany. The firm and its part­ners are natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally ranked by JUVE, Best Lawy­ers, Legal 500, Focus, and Cham­bers and Part­ners. Today, SMP employs more than 60 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors and tax specia­lists in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. www.smp.law

Consul­tant 42CAP: SMP
Dr. Frede­rik Gärt­ner (Corpo­rate), Asso­ciate Partner
Jens Kretz­schmann (Taxes), Partner
Dr. Martyna Sabat (Corpo­rate), Associate