US-based vaccine developer SutroVax raised $22m in a series A round led by venture capital firm Abingworth and backed by pharmaceutical company Roche’s corporate venturing unit, Roche Venture Fund, yesterday.
Investment firm Longitude Capital and VC firm CTI Life Sciences Fund also participated in the round.
SutroVax, which was spun out of biopharmaceutical company Sutro Biopharma in January 2014, is developing vaccines for infectious diseases. The series A funding will be used to advance several of the company’s vaccine candidates through the preclinical stage.
SutroVax received an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation, a subsidiary of pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, and Sutro BioPharma in January 2014.
Tracy Saxton, investment manager of Roche Venture Fund, will join SutroVax’s board of directors alongside Patrick Enright, Longitude’s founder and managing director. Kurt von Emster, managing partner of Abingworth, will become interim chairman of SutroVax.