Ferrosa Therapeutics AG, a Basel, Switzerland-based biotechnology company developing a bispecific antibody for anemia of inflammation, has closed a USD 3.5 million seed financing round to advance its lead preclinical program.
The round was led solely by Forty51 Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on biotech company formation that also served as Ferrosa's founding investor and was involved in the company's operational and financial setup. Ferrosa was incorporated in 2026. Proceeds will fund antibody generation, bispecific engineering, and in vivo proof-of-concept studies in disease-relevant animal models.
Ferrosa's lead program is a bispecific antibody designed to simultaneously address two pathological drivers of anemia inflammation: cytokine-driven dysregulation of iron homeostasis and suppressed erythropoiesis. In chronic inflammatory conditions, elevated hepcidin restricts iron availability to the bone marrow while pro-inflammatory cytokines independently impair red blood cell production. The company's rationale is that existing single-target therapies — erythropoiesis-stimulating agents, intravenous iron, and blood transfusions — address neither driver adequately in combination, and that a dual-mechanism bispecific format could produce synergistic benefit where monotherapies have not. The program is currently preclinical, with no clinical trial activity publicly disclosed.
The company's target indications include chronic kidney disease, autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, and oncology-associated anemia of inflammation — conditions in which persistent cytokine elevation drives both iron sequestration and marrow suppression concurrently.