Date: 2013-11-04
Type of information: Series B financing round
Company: Hookipa Biotech (Austria)
Investors: BioMedPartners (Switzerland), Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (Germany), Forbion Capital Partners (The Netherlands), Sofinnova Partners (France), Takeda Ventures (Japan)
Amount: €20 million
Funding type: series B financing round
Planned used: Hookipa has developed Vaxwave®, a novel and proprietary viral vector platform with exquisite capacity for the stimulation of antibody and CD8+ T cell immunity. The Company’s lead product candidate based on this platform, HB101, is a vaccine against cytomegalovirus (CMV) that is currently in advanced pre-clinical development and testing. The new investment will be used to progress HB101 into Phase I clinical testing and to further industrialize Vaxwave® technology, both for partnering and for building a robust product pipeline in the area of infectious diseases and cancer. Hookipa’s Vaxwave® technology exhibits great potential for cancer immunotherapy, since Vaxwave® vectors are not inhibited by anti-vector immunity and can be repeatedly administered for stimulating potent CD8+ T cell responses against tumor targets. The series B financing will thus also be used to explore applications for novel cancer therapies.
Others:
Hookipa Biotech AG is developing a new class of vaccines based on its proprietary Vaxwave® technology. The Vaxwave® technology is a novel vaccine platform using a replication-defective viral vector for the prevention and treatment of multiple infectious diseases and cancer. It has been validated in various disease models. Unlike other vectors, Vaxwave® vaccines can be administered repeatedly to boost the immune system. The Company is focused on the development of its lead vaccine candidate HB101, a vaccine for immunization against cytomegalovirus (CMV) and plans to further industrialize the Vaxwave® technology and build a robust product pipeline in the area of infectious diseases and cancer.
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology - Infectious diseases