Symphogen, a private biopharmaceutical company developing recombinant antibody mixtures, announced today that it closed an expansion of its previously announced EURO100 million financing, attaining a total of a EURO141 million placement of preferred stock to a group of existing investors. Novo A/S and PKA led the expansion with investments of EURO20 million each, while Danica Pension participated with its pre-financing ownership share of the additional financing. The proceeds of the financing will be used to advance and expand Symphogen's proprietary oncology product pipeline of antibody mixture products addressing multiple targets in a single drug product.

Goran Ando, Chairman of the Board, noted: "This additional financing emphasizes the strong support of our syndicate of investors and allows the company to further significantly expand its oncology pipeline of antibody mixtures, allowing us to build a broad pipeline of innovative cancer medicines."

In conjunction with the financing, Dr. Anthony Tolcher, President and Co-Founder of START, joins Symphogen's Board. Dr. Tolcher leads one of the world's largest clinical Phase I and early drug development operations in cancer medicine with 3 locations in San Antonio, Texas; Madrid, Spain and Shanghai, China.

Kirsten Drejer, PhD., Symphogen's Chief Executive Officer, commented: "We met an important goal last year when we partnered with Merck-Serono on our most advanced oncology asset. Going forward, we will continue to partner when appropriate as well as identify assets in our pipeline that we can advance to the market ourselves. A pro-forma cash position of more than EURO100 million and the addition of Dr. Tolcher to our Board allows us to execute on this strategic ambition. Dr. Tolcher not only strengthens our oncology drug development expertise, but brings strong insight into translational oncology drug development as a leading clinician in the field of oncology."

Michael Nelleman Pedersen, Chief Investment Officer of PKA, said: "Since our initial investment in 2011, Symphogen has delivered to our expectations and this additional investment provides unprecedented financial strength to develop and bring innovative cancer products to the market."

Henrik Gurtler, CEO of Novo A/S, added: "It is important to understand the significance of the investments of Danica Pension and PKA. This is Danica Pension's first active investment in Symphogen, where they are participating independently rather than as a limited partner in a venture fund. Similarly, PKA, which first invested in Symphogen less than two years ago, has significantly increased its commitment to the company in this round. This is somewhat unusual in today's venture investing arena. Both groups provide an important endorsement of the company's focus, its ability to make strategic decisions and, of course, to move programs through the clinic."