Date: 2016-05-17
Type of information: Series A financing round
Company: Nouscom (Switzerland)
Investors: LSP (The Netherlands) Versant Ventures (USA - CA)
Amount: € 12 million
Funding type: series A financing round
Planned used: Nouscom was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland with operations in Rome, Italy. This private oncology company is developing next generation immunotherapies. Its platform harnesses the full power of immune response by combining oncolytic viruses specifically targeted to a tumor with viral vectored genetic vaccines based on patient specific neo-antigens. Founders of Nouscom are a well-established team that has worked together for many years in previous successful enterprises, including IRBM/Merck and Okairos, and are veterans in the field of oncolytic viruses and genetic vaccines. It is funded by LSP (Life Sciences Partners) and Versant Ventures. The funds will be used to support discovery and development of personalized cancer vaccines and tumor selective oncolytic viruses. Nouscom has two product candidates, the Endovax and Exovax programs. Endovax, an antigenless vaccine, is based on oncolytic viruses capable of infecting and replicating only in cancer cells and causing immunogenic cell death, thereby recruiting T cells at the tumor site and reactivating T cells exhausted in the tumor microenvironment. Exovax is based on viral vectors coding for strings of cancer neoepitopes to induce and expand cancer and patient specific T cells. In its second development program, Nouscom scientists have developed a next generation of oncolytic viruses, encoding for a variety of immunomodulators and capable of infecting and killing cancer cells with the specificity of antibodies while not infecting normal cell.
Others: * On May, 17 2016, Nouscom announced that it has closed a € 12 million Series A financing co-led by LSP and Versant Ventures. The funds will be used to support discovery and development of personalized cancer vaccines and tumor selective oncolytic viruses.
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
