Denmark-based vaccine developer MinervaX has collected €47.4m ($57.6m) in a series B round that included Sanofi Ventures, the corporate venturing unit for pharmaceutical company Sanofi.
The round was also backed by pharmaceutical firm Novo’s Repair Impact Fund, Wellington Partners, Sunstone Life Science Ventures, LF Investment, Adjuvant Capital and Industrifonden, an investment vehicle owned by the government of Sweden.
Founded in 2010, MinervaX is developing a vaccine used to inoculate pregnant women against group B Streptococcus (GBS), a disease the company said is responsible for nearly half of all life-threatening infections in new-born children.
The funding will be used to progress MinervaX’s GBS vaccine development through phase 2 clinical trials as well as manufacturing and regulatory preparation activities ahead of planned phase 3 trials.
MinervaX received $5m from Repair Impact Fund and Sunstone Capital in January 2019. Novo’s seed-stage investment arm, Novo Seeds had participated in a $2.5m equity round for the company in 2016 alongside Sunstone Capital and LF Investment.
In January 2014, MinervaX closed a $4m debt and equity round backed by Novo Seeds, Sunstone Capital, LF Investment, Seed Capital, the Danish Growth Foundation and Lund University Innovation System.