UK-based immunotherapy developer MiroBio formally launched yesterday with £27m ($33.1m) secured in a series A round featuring pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline’s SR One unit.
The round was co-led by therapeutics-focused venture capital fund Samsara BioCapital and Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI), University of Oxford’s VC fund. It included growth equity firm Advent Life Sciences.
Spun out of University of Oxford in October 2018, MiroBio is working on antibodies for multiple diseases that are intended to stimulate specific signals in immune cells in order to modulate a patient’s immune system.
The company is initially targeting autoimmune diseases where faulty immune cells sabotage healthy tissue, but could apply its platform to other indications with continued research.
MiroBio’s approach is based on research led by Simon Davis, professor of molecular immunology at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, and Richard Cornall, a professor specialised in immunology in the Nuffield Department of Medicine.
The funding will facilitate work on MiroBio’s lead programs and discovery pipeline, while also supporting the augmentation of its management personnel as it prepares for the next stage of its growth strategy.
SR One partner Deborah Harland will join the company’s board of directors, as will OSI principal Andrew Mclean, Samsara BioCapital managing general partner Srini Akkaraju and Shahzad Malik, general partner at Advent Life Sciences.
Eliot Charles, a venture partner at SR One who is also chairman of MiroBio, said: “MiroBio has a robust technology and the ambition to bring new medicines to patients in need of improved therapies.
“To help realise this goal, we have assembled a strong syndicate of leading healthcare investors who have a solid track record of creating successful biotech companies and backing world-leading teams like the one we have started to build.”
A version of this article first appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing.