BioRexis Completes $30 Million Series B Financing
KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa., March 11 /PRNewswire/ -- BioRexis Pharmaceutical Corporation, a privately held biopharmaceutical company, announced today that it has raised $30 million in a Series B private equity financing led by Prism Venture Partners of Westwood, Massachusetts and Quaker BioVentures of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The financing was oversubscribed and included new investors Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation, Gund Investment Corporation and Anthem Capital and existing investors ProQuest Investments and Tullis-Dickerson & Company. BioRexis has raised over $38 million since its inception in July 2002.
As part of the financing, Duane Mason, Co-founder and General Partner of Prism Venture Partners, will join BioRexis' board of directors. Duane Mason commented, "BioRexis is using unique protein engineering technology to advance an impressive product pipeline to the clinic. We believe BioRexis has the potential to develop many exciting, innovative, best-in-class protein and peptide therapeutics."
P. Sherrill Neff, Managing Partner of Quaker BioVentures, added, "We are delighted to increase our investment in BioRexis, which was our fund's first investment. We have been impressed with the company's progress to date, and we are particularly pleased with the recent positive preclinical results for their lead drug candidate for type 2 diabetes."
The funds raised in the Series B round will be used to advance BioRexis' pipeline of biopharmaceuticals through preclinical testing and clinical trials. BioRexis' proprietary protein engineering technology provides novel protein and peptide drugs with superior pharmacology and Trans-bodies(TM) to replace conventional monoclonal antibodies ("MAbs"). BioRexis' technology involves fusion of peptides and proteins to a modified version of the blood serum protein transferrin, thereby prolonging their circulatory half-life, improving efficacy, decreasing side effects and reducing dosage. The company's lead product is a peptide fusion, currently in preclinical trials for type 2 diabetes. Additional biopharmaceutical products under development include a novel longer-acting interferon and an erythropoietin receptor agonist.
BioRexis' CEO, David R. King, said, "We are delighted to have attracted such a high-caliber group of investors and appreciate their endorsement of our technology and strategic direction. This financing will enable us to accelerate the advancement of our preclinical programs into the clinic so that we can commercialize proprietary improved biopharmaceuticals using our protein engineering technology and manufacturing systems."
About BioRexis Pharmaceutical Corporation
BioRexis(TM) Pharmaceutical Corporation develops novel, extended half-life protein and peptide drugs with superior pharmacology and Trans-bodies(TM) to replace conventional monoclonal antibodies ("MAbs"). Both can be produced in highly efficient manufacturing systems that use Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker's yeast) instead of expensive mammalian cell culture.
Many proteins and peptides face difficulties in development and commercialization due to their poor pharmacokinetic profiles, requiring both high and frequent dosing which often leads to side effects. This reduces therapeutic benefit and can limit the range of indications for which the drug can be used. High dosing per patient also places a further burden on already limited manufacturing capacity, driving up the cost of treatment (as in the case of MAbs and other high priced biopharmaceuticals).
BioRexis solves these problems through its proprietary protein engineering approach, using a natural variant of the human serum protein transferrin as a carrier protein and as a scaffold for the effective presentation of proteins and peptides. BioRexis developed and solely owns this technology, which gives it great flexibility in transactions with pharmaceutical companies. For additional information, please visit biorexis.com.
VaxInnate Corporation Raises $23.1 Million in Series B Financing
NEW HAVEN, Conn., March 11 /PRNewswire/ -- VaxInnate Corporation announced today that it has completed a $23.1 million, Series B financing to advance the development of next-generation preventative vaccines and immune therapies for infectious disease and cancer. The Company's products are based on a proprietary technology platform that capitalizes on recent breakthroughs in understanding innate (natural) immunity. New investors, HealthCare Ventures, Oxford Bioscience Partners LLC and MedImmune Ventures, Inc., joined the existing investor, CHL Medical Partners, in the financing.
In addition, the Company announced the appointment of Carlo Russo, M.D., as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Dr. Russo has been a leading expert in immunology and vaccine development for over 20 years. He joins the Company from Merck Research Laboratories where, as Executive Director and head of the Global Strategic Regulatory Development, he oversaw the development of innovative vaccines including vaccines against Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), Rotavirus and combination pediatric vaccines.
"Dramatic advances in immune biology have set the stage for potent and specific new products for diseases that affect large populations today, as well as for emerging diseases," said Augustine Lawlor, general partner at HealthCare Ventures, which led the financing. "VaxInnate's scientific founders have pioneered these advances. With the appointment of Carlo Russo, the Company has a leader with an outstanding track record in vaccine development."
The Company's scientific founders are Ruslan Medzhitov, Ph.D., professor of Imunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, and Richard Flavell, Ph.D., chairman and professor of Immunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine. Drs. Medzhitov and Flavell also are Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators.
The VaxInnate Approach
VaxInnate's proprietary VaxIne(TM) Platform Technology is based on recent scientific breakthroughs in understanding the molecular basis of innate (natural) immunity and its role in regulating the body's adaptive (acquired) immune response. The Company's products are designed to generate highly potent and specific immune responses by activating both of these arms of the immune system. Specifically, the Company is developing products that combine a disease-specific antigen, to trigger an adaptive immune response, with proprietary compounds called Pathogen-Associated Molecular Patterns (PAMPs), to trigger the response through innate immune pathways.
"VaxInnate has made great progress in establishing its technology platform and in demonstrating proof of concept in preclinical models, which show it can produce potent immune responses with a high degree of tolerability," said Dr. Russo. "With this financing, the Company will expand its scientific team and advance the development of important vaccines for the prevention of infectious diseases and for immune therapy of cancer."
Prior to his tenure at Merck, Dr. Russo held a series of research and academic appointments at the Scripps Research Institute, at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and at the Cornell University Medical School, where he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and faculty member of the Immunology Program at Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Science. Dr. Russo remains an Adjunct Associate Research Professor of Immunology in Medicine at the Weill Medical College, Cornell University.
New Members Appointed to Board of Directors
VaxInnate also announced the appointment of new members to its Board of Directors. These include R. Gordon Douglas, M.D., director of strategic planning at the National Institutes of Health, and former president of Merck's Vaccine Division, Augustine Lawlor, a general partner at HealthCare Ventures, Michael Lytton, partner at Oxford Biosciences, and Franklin Top, Jr., executive vice president and medical director at MedImmune, Inc.
They join existing board members Gregory Gardiner, Ph.D., former managing director of Yale University's Office of Cooperative Research (OCR), and Gregory Weinhoff, M.D., partner at Collinson Howe & Lennox.
About VaxInnate
Founded in 2001, VaxInnate Corporation is a private biotechnology company focused on exploiting the principles of innate immunity to provide an entirely new technology platform for the development and commercialization of next generation prophylactic vaccines and immune therapies. The Company's VaxIne(TM) technology is a proprietary type of vaccine that contains an antigen coupled with Pathogen-Associated Molecular Patterns (PAMPs). The Company intends to launch three internal programs during the course of the next year. For more information on VaxInnate, please visit www.vaxinnate.com. |
