LONDON, UK: IP Group plc (LSE: IPO) portfolio firm Microbiotica Ltd, a number one participant in discovering and developing microbiome-based therapeutics and biomarkers, has accomplished its £50m Series B financing round, the largest microbiome-related financing in Europe to date.
The financing spherical was additionally supported by new investors Flerie Invest, Tencent and British Patient Capital as well as existing investors IP Group, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Seventure Partners.
The proceeds will be used to progress Microbiotica’s two lead oral Live Bacterial Therapeutics (LBTs), MB097 and MB310, to Phase 1b clinical research in addition to to expand its discovery pipeline of biomarkers and LBTs in new illness areas.
IP Group dedicated £4m to the funding spherical and, following completion, has an undiluted beneficial holding of 18.2% in Microbiotica, valued at £16.1m. IP Group has recorded a net unrealised fair worth gain of £2.2m.
Dr Sam Williams, Managing Partner of Life Sciences at IP Group plc, said: “As a founding investor in Microbiotica, our thesis was that, by culturing, characterising and stratifying the human microbiome, Microbiotica would be able to identify live biotherapeutics with the best chance of clinical success within the microbiome field. The company’s pre-clinical data suggest that, so far, our thesis is proving correct, and we’re delighted that the company’s esteemed new investors are becoming a member of us for the subsequent leg of this thrilling journey.”
Microbiotica, spun out of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, has taken microbiome evaluation and affected person stratification from clinical data to a brand new level of precision, and interprets this into new therapeutics and biomarkers. The company’s proprietary technology is based on complete intestine bacterial isolation, its main database of intestine bacterial reference genomes and superior bioinformatic and machine studying tools. Microbiotica has partnered with main organisations, such as Cancer Research UK, Cambridge University Hospitals, University of Adelaide and Genentech.
MB097 is a fully outlined LBT comprising a consortium of micro organism on the core of Microbiotica’s clinical microbiome signature predictive of affected person response to Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor therapy. MB310 is a fully outlined LBT comprising a consortium of micro organism for the treatment of Ulcerative Colitis (UC) recognized as being linked to remission in a UC faecal transplant clinical study.
Both MB097 and MB310 are precision medicines derived by extremely correct clinical microbiome profiling utilizing Microbiotica’s platform which hyperlinks consortia of micro organism with clinical trial outcome data. Both merchandise have additionally been validated and mechanistically characterised pre-clinically through in vivo efficacy data and ex vivo human cell data.
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