US-based vaccine developer SutroVax closed $64m in funding yesterday, including $60m from a series B round featuring Roche Venture Fund, pharmaceutical company Roche’s corporate venturing unit.
The round was co-led by venture capital firm Frazier Healthcare Partners and Pivotal BioVenture Partners, the healthcare technology fund backed by property developer Nan Fung Group that was formed by former Roche Venture Fund investment director Tracy Saxton.
VC firm Abingworth, investment firm Longitude Capital, and specialist find CTI Life Sciences Fund filled out the round’s participants. Undisclosed existing backers provided a further $4m for SutroVax, taking the funding to $64m.
Spun out of biopharmaceutical company Sutro Biopharma in 2014, SutroVax is working on conjugate and complex antigen-based vaccines to prevent infectious diseases.
The series B round follows a $22m series A round led by Abingworth that included Roche Venture Fund, Longitude Capital and CTI Life Sciences Fund in mid-2015.
The capital will support the advance of SutroVax’s lead product candidate, a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine to combat pneumococcal disease. Additional funds will be used to enhance its antigen discovery and development activities for other disease areas.
Saxton said: “We are excited by the company’s differentiated approach and groundbreaking progress in developing a potential best-in-class pneumococcal conjugate vaccine to provide coverage of circulating pathogenic strains outside of the current standard of care.”
Saxton is joining SutroVax’s board of directors along with Patrick Heron, managing general partner at Frazier Healthcare Ventures.