Imophoron, the Bristol-based developer of a rapid-response vaccine platform, ADDomer, has secured £4 million in an oversubscribed fundraising round.
Frederic Garzoni, CEO and Co-founder of Imophoron, said: “It has now been demonstrated how a pandemic cannot just threaten lives, but our society and economy as we know it. Imophoron is developing its ADDomer vaccine platform with Disease X capability – the ability to develop a new candidate against a pandemic within five weeks – and also against numerous other infectious diseases. Now we have demonstrated this capability, we will build on this promising data to take our first candidates towards the clinic.”
In order to secure funding, Imophoron demonstrated its ability to rapidly generate vaccine candidates with its ADDomer platform against a range of different diseases. Imophoron successfully demonstrated a method suitable for pandemics by generating a Covid vaccine candidate within a five-week period. This Covid vaccine has been shown in preclinical models to induce strong immune responses against Covid. The vaccine has demonstrated the potential to prevent disease progression in diseases such as Covid, as well as break transmission.
In addition, this vaccine can be delivered by a variety of administrative routes, including intranasal, intravenous and intramuscular. This alleviates the need for a professional medic to administer vaccines, which reduces the cost and complexity of pandemic vaccine programmes.
Finally, Imophoron has devised a cost effective and simple manufacturing strategy and demonstrated a thermostability of its own vaccine candidates, unlike, for instance, the sub-temperature storage of alternative vaccines including those that are mRNA based. Imophoron’s vaccine candidates would therefore allow global distribution with no cold chain whatsoever.
The round was co-led by Science Creates Ventures and Octopus Ventures, alongside Jonathan Milner. This investment also included follow-on investment from business angels that participated in the Seed funding round which was completed in January 2019.
Image credit: Nick Fewings
