11 Dec 2009 07:00
Imperial Innovations Group plc
Leads £15.25m funding round to develop Circassia's allergy T-cell vaccine portfolio
London, 11 December 2009. Imperial Innovations Group plc (AIM: IVO, 'Imperial Innovations'), a leading technology commercialisation and investment company, has led a £15.25m funding round in Circassia, an allergy T-cell vaccine developer, with a £3.75m investment.
Other shareholders, including Invesco Perpetual and Lansdowne Partners, contributed the balance in a round that was significantly oversubscribed. Imperial Innovations has now led three funding rounds, accelerating Circassia's unique technology to late stage clinical trials.
Having successfully identified the optimal dosing regimens, the cat allergy T-cell vaccine will now be progressed into late-stage development with funds from today's investment. The money will also support Phase II studies on other allergens, including ragweed, house dust mite and grass. The ToleroMune® T-cell technology has the potential to treat other allergic conditions including peanut allergy.
Following today's round, Imperial Innovations will own 15.3% of Circassia, having invested a total of £7.5m.
Russ Cummings, Innovations Chief Investment Officer, plays an active role on the Board which is chaired by Sir Richard Sykes.
Susan Searle, Imperial Innovations Chief Executive, said:
"This funding is clear demonstration of our strategy to focus on companies and IP that address the great global challenges: energy use, healthcare and communications. We are resourcing a number of companies, where the combination of management, technology and market opportunity, matched with both ours and third party funding, ensure the optimum chance of success.
"The results of Circassia's clinical trials were very encouraging and the dramatic improvement in symptoms gave us all the confidence to support Circassia with additional funds to develop rapidly its ToleroMune® T-cell vaccines for cat and other allergies."
Enquiries:
| Imperial Innovations | 020 7594 6589 |
| Susan Searle, Chief Executive Officer | |
| Diana Crisp, PR Manager | |
| College Hill | 020 7457 2020 |
| Adrian Duffield/Carl Franklin | |
| J.P. Morgan Cazenove (NOMAD to Imperial Innovations) | 020 7588 2828 |
| Steve Baldwin |
Note to Editors
Imperial Innovations - www.imperialinnovations.co.uk
Imperial Innovations is one of the UK's leading technology commercialisation and investment companies. Founded in 1986 and admitted to the AIM in 2006, Imperial Innovations' access to early stage technology and intellectual property is unparalleled.
Imperial Innovations' integrated commercialisation approach encompasses the identification of ideas, the protection of intellectual property, the development and licensing of technology and the formation, incubation and funding, through investment, of technology businesses.
Based at Imperial College London, Imperial Innovations' portfolio of equity holdings in more than 80 companies spans its three core areas of energy use, healthcare, communications.
Other companies in the portfolio of Imperial Innovations include: Evo Electric (electric motor and generator solutions), Nexeon (lithium ion battery technology), Polytherics (drug development), Quantasol (solar concentrators) and Respivert (respiratory drug development).
Circassia www.circassia.co.uk.
Circassia is a specialty biopharmaceutical company focused on the field of allergy. The company's range of allergy T-cell vaccines is based on its proprietary ToleroMune® technology. This technology utilises allergen epitopes to generate regulatory T cells that suppress allergic immune responses. Clinical results with Circassia's cat allergy T-cell vaccine show that short treatment regimes can greatly reduce patients' symptoms, without the need for adjuvants or other immune stimulators, while proving extremely well tolerated. As a result, the company's allergy T-cell vaccines offer major potential clinical benefits compared with existing therapies, and consequently have significant market opportunities. Over 150 million people suffer from allergic rhinitis in the US and Europe, and the current treatment market is approximately $12 billion per year.
ToleroMune technology has additional potential regulatory and supply chain benefits. The short peptides utilised in Circassia's vaccines are manufactured chemically, in contrast to existing allergen immunotherapies, which are purified from natural sources. Circassia's approach applies the chemistry, manufacturing and control standards associated with conventional pharmaceuticals to its allergy T-cell vaccines. This fits with changes in the European regulatory environment, where authorities are increasingly treating allergen immunotherapies as pharmaceutical products, and requiring elimination of the batch-to-batch potency variability that is an intrinsic feature of many current treatments.
Circassia has a highly experienced management team with a proven track record in product development and commercialisation. Having successfully completed three fundraising rounds the company is backed by a syndicate of world-class venture capital and institutional investors, including Imperial Innovations, Invesco Perpetual, Goldman Sachs and Lansdowne Partners.