The Ger­man Fed­eral Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and Research has announced the first six funded biotech com­pa­nies in its COVID-19 ther­apy ini­tia­tive, which is being funded with up to €300 mil­lion. The fund­ing is intended to finan­cially accel­er­ate Phase IIb and Phase III stud­ies to improve med­ical care for patients with the disease.

In addi­tion to NAS­DAQ-listed InflaRx (Nas­daq: IFRX) — an Investee Part­ner of bm|t — other com­pa­nies selected for fund­ing include AdrenoMed AG, Apogenix AG, Atriva Ther­a­peu­tics GmbH, CORAT Ther­a­peu­tics GmbH and DRK Baden-Würt­tem­berg-Hes­sen gGmbH. These can­di­dates are devel­op­ing drugs to stop viral repli­ca­tion in the early stages of the dis­ease, as well as can­di­dates to help alle­vi­ate the severe immune-related symp­toms of later stages of COVID.

“At this point, only vac­ci­na­tion against Corona will help,” said Ger­man Health Min­is­ter Jens Spahn. “But we also want to take the hor­ror out of the pan­demic in the long term. That’s why we are pro­mot­ing the devel­op­ment of new drugs so that we can con­tinue to treat Corona patients well in the future. And we’re invest­ing in the future because we’re also strength­en­ing Germany’s posi­tion as a research and devel­op­ment loca­tion in the field of biotech­nol­ogy.” Fed­eral Research Min­is­ter Anja Kar­liczek said, “Even with wide­spread avail­abil­ity of COVID-19 vac­cines, not every­one will be able to receive a vac­ci­na­tion. There­fore, more effec­tive drugs are needed to treat suf­fer­ers. Due to the vary­ing sever­ity and stages of the dis­ease, patients require dif­fer­ent ther­a­pies. Con­se­quently, a broad treat­ment reper­toire is needed.”

About InflaRx N.V.:

InflaRx (Nas­daq: IFRX) is a clin­i­cal-stage bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany focused on apply­ing its pro­pri­etary anti-C5a tech­nol­ogy to dis­cover and develop first-in-class, potent and spe­cific inhibitors of C5a. Com­ple­ment C5a is a pow­er­ful inflam­ma­tory medi­a­tor involved in the pro­gres­sion of a wide vari­ety of autoim­mune and other inflam­ma­tory dis­eases. InflaRx was founded in 2007, and the group has offices and sub­sidiaries in Jena and Munich, Ger­many, as well as Ann Arbor, MI, USA.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please visit www.inflarx.com