US-based biotechnology developer EpiBiome recently completed a $6m series A round with participation from Alexandria Venture Investments, the strategic investment arm of property firm Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
The round also included investment firm Viking Global Investors, which took part through the Illumina Accelerator Boost Capital fund, hedge fund manager Matrix Capital Management and venture capital firms SV Tech Ventures and China Rock Capital Management.
EpiBiome develops therapies to combat infectious diseases in humans and agriculture without the use of antibiotics. The funds will be invested in its microbiome engineering platform and used to purchase additional patents on its technology.
The company was originally seeded in 2014 with $120,000 as a graduate of the first genomics incubator program run by Illumina Accelerator. It also won the JLabs QuickFire Challenge run by Johnson & Johnson Innnovation, a subsidiary of healthcare group Johnson & Johnson.
In December 2015, EpiBiome won a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a proposal to develop new tools to improve infant gut health.