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Image credits: Orexa

The Netherlands-based Orexa, a life science company developing a drug to increase food intake, announced on Wednesday, August 31, that it has secured €1.2M from a group of informal investors. The announcement comes five months after raising €800K earlier in March.

Orexa is headquartered in Herpen (Oss Region, Noord Brabant), The Netherlands.

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The Dutch company says it will use the capital to launch its first Phase 2 clinical trial, investigating whether patients who have undergone invasive surgery can recover more quickly. 

The funds will also be used to accelerate a second Phase 2 study, aimed at treating Anorexia patients.

“We are delighted that we will soon be able to investigate the efficacy of our new drug in the first patients,” says Prof. Dr. Ard Peeters. He continues: “The phase 2a study will be conducted in patients who have undergone surgery. With our drug, we can prevent a so-called post-operative ileus. This serious complication affects up to 50 per cent of patients in several groups. It leads to patients being unable to eat and therefore recovering more slowly, resulting in prolonged hospitalisation. In addition to this indication, we would like to conduct a study on anorexia patients, followed by a study on older adults with malnutrition (sarcopenia). These are all indications that many patients may benefit from our medicine.”

Undernutrition is a serious clinical complication, says Orexa. The majority of medical treatments are highly dependent on food intake. Proper food intake improves patients’ physical conditions, their tolerability of treatments, and shortens recovery time. 

As a result, the company has developed proprietary pharmacological interventions for treating diseases and medical problems related to human food intake and retention. 

Orexa: What you need to know

Founded by Prof. Dr. Ard Peeters in 2016, Orexa is a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company that develops and commercialises therapeutics to increase food intake. 

Orex says the lead compound is a proprietary oral formulation based on a well-known anaesthetic for human use. Peeters discovered that food intake is changed by local administration of anaesthetics in the stomach. He expected that the food intake would decrease, but to his surprise, he found out that the test animals ate more.

The effect has been experimented with in dozens of animal studies and healthy volunteers, claims the company. As a result, it has been patented, and Orexa has filed a patent for an innovative tablet formulation. 

“We are grateful for the broad support from existing and new investors, with which we have laid a sufficiently solid financial foundation to conduct our first clinical trial and prepare our second clinical trial,” says CEO Sake Stevenhaagen. “After the successful financing round of € 800,000 earlier this year, this is a second important step for Orexa. The ultimate goal is to investigate in multiple indications whether the mechanism of action also works in patients and in which patient groups the most health benefits could be achieved. We can continue our ambitious program at full speed with this second successful funding round.”