Microbiotica Attracts Equity Investment from Seventure’s Health for Life Capital™ Fund
- Seventure Partners, a specialist investor in the microbiome, commits new funding fromHealth for Life Capital™ and strengthens Microbiotica’s Board with microbiome sector expertise and know-how
- Joins founding investors, Cambridge Innovation Capital and IP Group, by committing £4m, bringing total equity raised to £12m
Cambridge, UK, 24 October 2018 – Microbiotica, a leading player in microbiome-based therapeutics, today announced that it has attracted an equity investment from Seventure Partners, a leading investor in the microbiome space. This new investment of £4m brings the total equity raised to date to £12m.
The company, which was founded in 2016 to develop transformational technology developed at the Sanger Institute, has made rapid progress in developing a unique capability to culture, characterise and phenotype the majority of a patient’s gut bacteria, enabling the precise association of bacteria to function at clinical trial scale.
Mike Romanos, CEO of Microbiotica, said: “The microbiome represents a paradigm shift which requires the re-evaluation of almost every aspect of biomedicine. Microbiotica’s world-leading microbiome culture collection and reference genome database enable unprecedented precision of gut bacterial identification and provide the foundation for the company to develop its own pipeline of microbiome-derived therapeutics and biomarkers. We look forward to working with Iain Wilcock, who will join the Microbiotica Board of Directors, and with the broader Seventure team led by Isabelle De Cremoux.”
Isabelle de Cremoux, CEO of Seventure Partners, said: “We have watched Microbiotica make dramatic progress in implementing its vision and believe the company has developed a powerful set of capabilities for biomarker and therapeutic discovery in the microbiome field. We believe that the company has the potential to become a global leader in this fast-growing area, led by a strong and ambitious management team with considerable depth of expertise and experience, and are excited to be involved in helping realise this potential.”
As a result of this investment, Microbiotica’s shareholders comprise the Founders, Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge Innovation Capital, IP Group plc and Seventure Partners.
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Notes to Editors
About Microbiotica
Microbiotica was established in 2016 to develop and commercialise ground-breaking research into the role of the human microbiome in health and disease and its application to medicine conducted in the Host-Microbiotica Interactions Laboratory (“HMIL”) at the Sanger Institute. The Company was founded by Dr Mike Romanos, Dr Trevor Lawley and Professor Gordon Dougan, FRS. Microbiotica is based at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Cambridge, UK, with offices in the Biodata Innovation Centre and laboratories in the Sanger Institute. It has a strategic collaboration with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, in the field of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) as well as with University of Adelaide to develop a defined product for ulcerative colitis.
Microbiotica has attracted £12m in equity investment from Cambridge Innovation Capital, IP Group plc and Seventure Partners.
For more information, please visit www.microbiotica.com, LinkedIn and Twitter.
About Microbiotica’s platform
The Microbiotica platform comprises the world’s leading microbiome Culture Collection and linked Reference Genome Database that enable unprecedented precision of gut bacterial identification The Company is adding to this at a very rapid rate through its industrial culturing and sequencing pipeline, providing the best available representation of clinical trial samples for strain-level identification of bacteria. The complex datasets that arise from such studies are analysed using AI techniques to discern microbiome signatures linked to phenotype. The availability of the physical Culture Collection enables biological evaluation of bacteria in proprietary translational models including humanised microbiome mouse models.
About the Microbiome
Recognition of the importance of the microbiome, the body’s trillions of resident bacteria, represents a paradigm-shift in our understanding of its impact on human health and disease. This creates major opportunities in the diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of disease including enteric infections, autoimmune disorders, metabolic disorders, cancer and neurological disease.
About Seventure Partners
With over €690m in assets under management as of the end of 2017, Seventure Partners is a leading venture capital firm in Europe. Since 1997, Seventure Partners has been investing in innovative businesses with high growth potential in two fields: Digital technologies in France and Germany, and Life sciences across Europe, Israel and North America. In life sciences, the four areas of focus include biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, digital/connected health and medtech, industrial biotechnology, and last but not least: the MICROBIOME, nutrition, foodtech and personalized medicine. Investments can range between €500k and €10m per round, or up to €20m per company, from early to late stage.
In December 2013, Seventure Partners successfully launched Health for Life Capital™ that invests in life sciences worldwide, with a core focus on the microbiome revolution and its applications in human health and nutrition. The €160m fund has attracted strategic investments from prestigious organizations including Danone, Tereos, Tornier, Lesaffre, Bel and Novartis, as well as entrepreneurs and financial institutions. In March 2018, Seventure Partners launched AVF, a new fund dedicated to invest in innovative solutions for animal nutrition, feed and health. Adisseo is one of the first strategic partners of the fund.
For more details: http://www.seventure.fr/en
For more information please contact:
Microbiotica
Rowena Gardner
rgardner@microbiotica.com
+44 1223 786063 / +44 7801 480569
Instinctif Partners (for media enquiries):
Sue Charles/Gemma Harris
microbiotica@instinctif.com
+44 20 7866 7860