Ethics and Bioethics

Meneldor and The Meneldor Foundation strive to create a positive societal impact and to promote ethical behavior across all our portfolio companies. We want to be valued for not only our investment decisions, and the drug development achievements of our portfolio companies, but also for the way we work. We believe integrity, respect and transparency comprise the foundation of a healthy business culture. We build trust by demonstrating ethical business practices and fair treatment of all living things in everything we do within our portfolio companies, across our value chain and in society.

Meneldor invests in innovative biopharma companies that aim to make healthcare more affordable and improve access to important and or high unmet-medical-need medicines for patients. Overlaying all other investment criteria that Meneldor uses, high ethical standards of her potential portfolio companies are key when it comes to making a positive investment decision.
Across our portfolio companies and our organization, we stimulate and support ethical business cultures, inclusion and diversity, talent development, training, wellbeing and safety of our workforces.

Bioethics refers in the broadest sense to the range of ethical issues that arise from the study and practice of biological and medical science.
Before any medicine can be brought to market, clinical trials must first be conducted to establish that the medicine is both efficacious and well tolerated. However, before human clinical trials for new medicines can proceed, regulatory bodies worldwide require efficacy and safety data from studies conducted on animals. As research seeks new treatment solutions for complex diseases, such as neurodegenerative disorders, animal testing continues to be necessary in order to facilitate these developments.

We consider the responsible use of animals to be ethically appropriate in biomedical research and product development, where suitable non-animal alternatives are not available. We share the concerns for animal welfare and recognize this as a serious responsibility. We actively promote compliance with the high standards in animal care and to the principles of the ‘3Rs’ – Replacement, Reduction and Refinement of animals in research – as well as being open and transparent about our work with animals, to our portfolio companies.

The 3R’s:

• REDUCE
  With careful design, sophisticated statistical techniques and modern imaging, it is often possible to significantly reduce the number of animals used in research while still generating valid results, truly adding to the knowledge base.
• REFINE
  This refers to decreasing the potential for causing animals distress and continuously seeking advancements in animal husbandry, care practices and environmental enrichment to provide the best possible conditions for animals.
• REPLACE
  Research animals are either replaced by methods not involving animals (absolute replacement) or by methods using only the cells or tissues of animals (relative replacement). Such alternative methods include cell and bacterial cultures, computer simulations, mathematical modelling, and the use of microphysiological human or animal systems (organ-on-a-chip approaches).

Biodiversity

The ambitions of Meneldor and The Meneldor Foundation clearly demonstrate our commitment to preserving biodiversity. Therefore we explicitly mention our commitment to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) , and within that the Nagoya Protocol. We strongly support the people developing the post-2020 Biodiversity Framework, and hope for strong plans and successful implementation.

Meneldor performs a thorough due diligence on all its investors, and has a solid anti-money laundering and anti-finance of terrorism policy in place. Meneldor is monitored by the Dutch financial authority AFM, the Dutch National Bank (DNB), and all other banks that we use for our activities.

Note: Rather than reinventing the wheel and trying to improve excellent texts on Ethics and Bioethics, we have borrowed words from the websites of AstraZeneca, Roche, and Synthon, which we herewith acknowledge. We have translated the policies of these multinational companies to the situation of our young early stage biopharmaceutical investment fund and our foundation.