Zambon, an Italian pharmaceutical multinational, has acquired the biotech Breath Therapeutics at an initial price of 140 million euros and with the possibility of reaching a total of 500 million euros at the achievement of regulatory and commercial objectives.
The sellers are the French venture capitalists specialising in life science Sofinnova Partners, Gilde Healthcare and GIMV.

Zambon’s management was supported by K Finance (Clairfield Italy) with a team composed of Filippo Guicciardi and Maximiliano Turelli.
Leopoldo Zambeletti, an independent strategic advisor specialising in the healthcare sector, assisted Breath Therapeutics in the transaction.

Sofinnova took over Breath two and a half years ago, supporting it with a Euro43.5 million series A co-lead loan, together with Belgian investment company Gimv and investor Gilde Healthcare.

Zambon is a multinational pharmaceutical company that focuses on innovation and development with the aim of improving the quality of people’s health and patients’ lives. Based on a valuable asset but strongly oriented towards the future, its vision is “Innovating care to improve the lives of patients”.
Zambon operates in the pharmaceutical sectors and is present in 87 countries with subsidiaries in three different continents (Europe, America and Asia) and almost 2500 employees, with production units in Italy, Switzerland, China and Brazil.

Breath Therapeutics was founded by doctors Jens Stegemann, Oliver Denk, Gerhard Boerner and Anne Burger. The company focuses on advanced inhalation therapies for severe respiratory diseases. The main project they currently work on has begun two phase 3 global clinical trials and could become the first approved treatment for Bos, or obliterative bronchiolitis syndrome, a rare and very serious lung disease.

Sofinnova Partners is headquartered in Paris and Milan and operates as a leading or reference investor in start-ups, corporate spin-offs and advanced development companies. In over 45 years, Sofinnova Partners has promoted and financed about five hundred companies and has a total volume of funds under management of more than 2 billion. In addition to opening an office in Milan in 2019, in 2015 the venture capital company launched BiovelocITA, the first Italian accelerator in the biotechnology sector, and in 2018 the Sofinnova Telethon Fund, the largest venture capital fund in Italy dedicated to biotechnology. Sofinnova Partners also led the financing of EryDel, a company specializing in red blood cell therapies, in 2017.