Nordstjernan is expanding in the health and medical care sector by acquiring a majority of the shares in Barnmorskegruppen MAMA MIA Aktiebolag (“Mama Mia”) as an add-on acquisition for Lideta Hälsovård (“Lideta”). The sellers, the Wahlström family, will become partners in the company that will consist of both Lideta’s and Mama Mia’s operations. The current CEO of Lideta, Hugo Lewné, will continue as CEO of the group. At the same time, Mama Mia’s CEO Eva Laurin will become part of Lideta’s management team.

Mama Mia provides maternity and child health care services at seven clinics in Stockholm and Malmö, and primary health care at two clinics in Stockholm under the brand To Care. The company, founded in 1988 by Christina Wahlström, has grown rapidly over the last few years and with a little over 170 employees, its annual sales for the previous fiscal year were just under SEK 200 million. With this acquisition, Lideta is strengthening its position in maternity and child health care services, as well as in primary health care.

Tomas Billing, CEO of Nordstjernan, says:
“We look very positive at Mama Mia’s business and brand. Nordstjernan’s ambition is to develop a high-quality company in Swedish health and medical care over several years.”

Eva Laurin, CEO of Mama Mia, says:
“We are very pleased to have Nordstjernan as majority shareholder in Mama Mia. Our family looks forward to continuing to develop the company together with Nordstjernan and Lideta.”

The parties have agreed not to publish the terms of the transaction.

Tomas Billing
President and CEO
Nordstjernan AB

Questions will be answered by:

Tomas Billing, CEO, Nordstjernan
Telephone: +46 8 788 50 18
E-mail: tomas.billing@nordstjernan.se

Hugo Lewné, CEO, Lideta Hälsovård
Telephone: +46 42 453 04 90
E-mail: hugo@lideta.se

Eva Laurin, CEO, Mama Mia
Telephone: + 46 707 70 00 29
E-mail: eva.laurin@mamamia.se

Nordstjernan is a family-controlled investment company that creates growth in value through long-term and active ownership of Nordic companies. More information about Nordstjernan is available at www.nordstjernan.se 

Lideta Hälsovård is a medical care company that engages in primary care in Stockholm and southern Sweden. More information about Lideta is available at www.lideta.se 

Mama Mia provides maternity health care, child health care, and primary health care services in Stockholm and Malmö. More information about Mama Mia is available at www.mamamia.se

Ecolab Inc., the global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies and services has acquired a minority stake in MetGen OY. As part of the acquisition, Ecolab will be granted exclusive distribution rights globally for MetGen’s pulp and paper portfolio, as well as its wastewater enzyme portfolio. This business supplies differentiated custom blended enzymatic solutions to maximize biomass performance for various industries.

MetGen, headquartered in Kaarina, Finland, designs novel enzymatic solutions to improve energy efficiency and speed of processes in industries such as Pulp and Paper, Biofuels and Biochemicals.

“We are glad to welcome Ecolab as an investor in MetGen. Our business goals are fully aligned with Ecolab’s objective to support customers to achieve the best solutions in water technologies for the pulp and paper sector.  MetGen is excited to work together with the Ecolab team to accelerate market growth through the global introduction of innovative, sustainable enzymatic solutions in various business segments,” said Alex Michine, CEO of MetGen.

The investment provides Ecolab with access to innovative custom enzymes to help producers improve machine efficiency, water and energy savings, product quality and profitability. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“We are excited to work with MetGen and implement their innovative products into our offerings to enhance Ecolab’s ability to provide value-added solutions for our customers in the Pulp and Paper Industry,” said Jerome Charton, senior vice president and general manager, Nalco Water global paper, Ecolab’s water management business.

For more information, please contact:
Alex Michine, CEO, MetGen Oy, +358 40 543 3740
skype: alexmichine
www.metgen.com

About MetGen Oy
MetGen designs and markets novel enzymatic solutions for the most challenging of industrial conditions to address our customer’s specific challenges. MetGen’s enzymes – MetZyme® – are industrial, highly-active, natural catalysts that accelerate chemical reactions and company uses advances in genetic engineering and microbiology to adapt enzymes to harsh industrial conditions and to handle a variety of lignocellulosic substrates. MetGen aims to be a widely recognized supplier of industrial enzymes, significantly contributing to the economics and sustainability of process industries such as pulp & paper, biofuels and biochemicals. MetGen’s competitive advantage is in tailoring or adapting enzymes to meet customer’s specific needs. www.metgen.com

About Ecolab
A trusted partner at more than one million customer locations, Ecolab (ECL) is the global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies and services that protect people and vital resources. With 2016 sales of $13 billion and 48,000 associates, Ecolab delivers comprehensive solutions and on-site service to promote safe food, maintain clean environments, optimize water and energy use, and improve operational efficiencies for customers in the food, healthcare, energy, hospitality and industrial markets in more than 170 countries around the world. Follow us on Twitter @ecolab, Facebook at facebook.com/ecolab, LinkedIn at Ecolab or Instagram at Ecolab Inc.

About Tesi
Tesi (Finnish Industry Investment Ltd) is a venture capital and private equity company that accelerates companies’ success stories by investing in them directly and via funds. Tesi always invests together with other investors, providing them with access to high quality deal-flow in Finland. Our investments under management total 1 billion euros and we have altogether 723 companies in portfolio.
www.tesi.fi / @TesiFII

The immuno-oncology sector has yet another player. Kyn Therapeutics just made its debut after almost two years of gestation at Atlas Venture with three immuno-metabolism platforms and $49 million in first-round funding.

Explaining the rationale behind the new company, CEO Mark Manfredi told us that “the dramatic successes of checkpoint inhibitors have made their deficiencies and opportunities for improvement a hot topic in the industry, and a major driver for investment.”

“We believe immuno-metabolism is the next big area for immuno-oncology therapeutics, as it has the potential to generate broad-spectrum immune stimulation either alone or in combination with checkpoint inhibitors.”

Kyn comes out of stealth mode with a pair of preclinical programs targeting the kynurenine pathway, which is implicated in a number of diseases including cancer, as well as ARY-007, a prostaglandin E2 (EP4) receptor antagonist licensed from Japan’s AskAt Inc. that will be developed alongside affiliate company Arrys Therapeutics.

ARY-007 has already been through human trials outside of cancer and will be Kyn’s first clinical candidate, starting phase 1b trials next year, said Manfredi. The company has a big-hitting rival for the program, however, as Bristol-Myers Squibb has just licensed an EP4 receptor antagonist from longtime immuno-oncology partner Ono Pharma for $40 million upfront.

“The literature has increasingly evidenced a broad-ranging immunosuppressive function for this receptor, through multiple cellular mechanisms,” said the CEO. “Once we understood this, it was an obvious choice to assess in the cancer immunotherapy setting.”

Kyn’s kynurenine pathway candidates are further back in development but have “substantial” preclinical data showing they can improve anti-tumor immune responses, according to Manfredi.

The first focuses on Kynase—an enzyme that degrades kynurenine directly and addresses both IDO (indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase) and TDO (tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase) immunosuppression pathways—and grew out of work the University of Texas at Austin.

There’s no shortage of other groups working on IDO—with BMS, Incyte and NewLink currently leading the charge—but fewer have focused on TDO. Kyn’s approach of targeting Kynase may lead to “efficacy in tumors that overexpress either IDO, TDO or both [and] therefore … could address a broader patient population than IDO inhibitors alone,” according to Manfredi. Added to that, its candidates seem to be much stronger at blocking kynurenine than IDO inhibitors in clinical trials.

The third pillar of Kyn’s portfolio is an in-house program geared towards developing aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) antagonists that aim to block immunosuppression activated by various metabolites, including kynurenine.

The IDO/TDO and AHR programs are closely linked. In cancer cells, IDO and TDO stimulate the formation of kynurenine, which in turn activates AHR receptors and leads to an increase in immunosuppressive T cells in the tumor microenvironment. Moreover, AHR can also be activated by ligands other than kynurenine.

“In terms of clinical development, immunometabolism-based therapies are the next most advanced area within immuno-oncology,” he said, adding, “We think there is a lot of potential for our candidates in multiple solid tumors, but we’re not ready yet to talk specifics.”

“We also have a potential aid to efficiency in that the pathways we are exploring have several biomarkers—including the target metabolites themselves—that could lend themselves to patient enrichment approaches to study design.”

The $49 million in series A funding from Atlas and OrbiMed will be split two ways, with Arrys allocated $21 million for the EP4 project—which is subcontracted to Kyn—and the remaining $28 million going to the IDO/TDO and AHR programs, which should have lead development candidates selected in the next 12 to 18 months.

“We expect to add about 5 to 8 new employees internally over the next 12 months,” Manfredi told us. “Several of those employees will focus on candidate optimization and preclinical studies but we will also grow our internal clinical program management expertise.”