WILEX was founded in September 1997 by a team of clinical oncologists from the Technical University of Munich led by Professor Olaf G. Wilhelm. The founders had 15 years of experience in basis and clinical research on the uPA system and its role in tumour growth and tumour metastasis. This group was joined in 1999 by Professor Sven Warnaar of University of Leiden, Netherlands, who served until his retirement in 2003 as WILEX’s Chief Scientific Officer. In the early 1990s, Professor Warnaar and his team had discovered the G250 antibody (today: RENCAREX®) and the G250 (MN/CA IX) antigen as the therapeutic target of RENCAREX®.

The Company started operations in July 1998 after raising EUR 3 million in a financing round with a fund advised by Apax Partners as lead investor. To-date WILEX has raised EUR 68 million in four private financing rounds and EUR 55 million through its initial public offering in November 2006.

The funds were used to advance the clinical anti-cancer product portfolio of the Company and to build up pre-clinical research projects including academic collaborations. In particular, the clinical Phase I and Phase II study programme with the antibody RENCAREX® in renal cell cancer (RCC) were successfully completed and a Phase III study, which is currently ongoing, initiated. A new antibody based diagnostic imaging agent REDECTANE® has been developed. REDECTANE® is the radioactively labelled form of the antibody WX-G250 and was developed in cooperation with the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, where it demonstrated 100 % positive predictive accuracy in a feasibility study. In the uPA inhibitor programme, the two drug candidates WX-UK1 and MESUPRON® were brought from research into clinical development in cancer patients.

In January 2009 UCB and WILEX entered into strategic alliance to develop UCB's preclinical oncology portfolio and UCB became strategic investor of WILEX.

Milestones in the Company’s history