Vickers Venture leads US$11M in UK-based biotech startup
Vickers Venture Partners, a Singapore-headquartered global early-stage VC firm, has led an over US$11-million Series A funding round in UK-based Emergex Vaccines Holding.
Emergex is a biotechnology company that develops set-point vaccines to prevent serious infectious diseases.
Professor Thomas Rademacher, CEO and Co-founder of Emergex, commented: “These new funds will support us to achieve some significant value-enhancing milestones as we progress our lead vaccine candidates into clinical development.”
Founded in 2016, Emergex focuses on developing vaccines that prevent virulent diseases such as Zika, Dengue Fever, Ebola and even pandemic Flu. Its T-cell vaccines elicit different responses than traditional antibody-producing vaccines, eliminating allergic, autoimmune or antibody-mediated side effects.
Its underlying platform technology enables rapid development of vaccines to entire families of pathogens, compared to traditional approaches that can take years to develop and scale vaccines for single pathogens.
As per the deal, Dr. Finian Tan, Chairman of Vickers, will join the Emergex Board as a non-executive Director. He said: “With today’s rising global population, the risk posed by infectious diseases is greater than ever before. As such, it is vital that we value and pursue innovation to ensure we have effective healthcare options.
We see great potential in Emergex’s technology as it allows vaccines to be produced quickly, administered easily and sold at a fraction of current prices. We believe that this would revolutionise the entire world of vaccines and increase access to a larger number of people around the world,” Tan added.