US-based vaccine developer Icosavax emerged from stealth yesterday with $51m of series A funding from investors including Sanofi Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of pharmaceutical firm Sanofi.
Qiming Venture Partners USA led the round, which was also backed by fellow venture capital firm NanoDimension, private equity firm Adams Street Partners and undisclosed existing investors.
Spun out University of Washington (UW) in 2018, Icosavax is developing vaccines for infectious diseases using molecules known as virus-like particles (VLPs), which closely resemble viruses but are non-infectious because they do not contain genetic material.
Once injected, VLPs present complex antigens with immunological properties, having been molded into their final form using self-folding proteins created with Icosavax’s computational design platform.
The company’s lead asset, IVX-121, is a vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, a common condition with cold-like symptoms that can have serious complications in older adults. The series A capital will help take it through phase 1b clinical testing.
The candidates are commercialising research conducted at UW’s Institute for Protein Design (IPD) by assistant professor of biochemistry Neil King and David Baker, endowed professor of biochemistry and director of the IPD.
Icosavax had previously raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding in 2018. Its chief executive, Adam Simpson, is also CEO of PvP Biologics, another IPD spinout which is working on a treatment for coeliac disease.
A version of this article first appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing.