Austria-based vaccine developer Themis Bioscience has completed a €40m ($44m) series D round backed by pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co.
Investment management firm Farallon Capital and life science fund manager Hadean Ventures co-led the round, which also attracted Adjuvant Capital, a life sciences-focused fund that counts pharmaceutical company Novartis among its limited partners.
Global Health Investment Fund (GHIF), Omnes Capital, Ventech, Wellington Partners Life Sciences and AWS Gründerfonds, an investment vehicle of state-owned development bank Austria Wirtschaftsservice, filled out the round.
Spun out of research centre Institut Pasteur in 2009, Themis is working a platform that uses the measles virus to deliver vaccines into the body. The company’s lead asset, MV-Chik, is a vaccine for Chikungunya, a mosquito-borne disease that causes debilitating pain.
Themis is also developing vaccines for the Zika virus and Lassa fever that are undergoing phase 1 clinical trials, as well as candidates for respiratory syncytial virus, cytomegalovirus, norovirus and Middle East respiratory syndrome (commonly known as Mers).
The money will allow the company to accelerate a phase 3 trial for MV-Chik and to drive a further expansion into immuno-oncology. Walter Stockinger, managing partner at Hadean Ventures, will join its supervisory board.
Merck’s participation in the round was previously announced as a stake purchase, in connection with a strategic collaboration formed by the companies last month to co-develop vaccines for a range of undisclosed conditions.
Themis secured $12m in a January 2018 series C round led by GHIF and backed by AWS Grïunderfonds, Omnes Capital, Ventech and Wellington Partners Life Sciences.
The latter four joined assorted angel investors to supply $10.6m in series B funding for the company in 2016, after Wellington had led the $7.8m first close the year before.
Crédit Agricole Private Equity and Ventech had co-led a $7m series A round for Themis in 2011. AWS, Australian Research Promotion Agency and incubator Inits had already provided an undisclosed amount of seed financing for the company.
