NEW HAVEN, Conn., March 11 /PRNewswire/ -- VaxInnate Corporation announced today that it has completed a $23.1 million, Series B financing to advance the development of next-generation preventative vaccines and immune therapies for infectious disease and cancer. The Company's products are based on a proprietary technology platform that capitalizes on recent breakthroughs in understanding innate (natural) immunity. New investors, HealthCare Ventures, Oxford Bioscience Partners LLC and MedImmune Ventures, Inc., joined the existing investor, CHL Medical Partners, in the financing.
In addition, the Company announced the appointment of Carlo Russo, M.D., as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Dr. Russo has been a leading expert in immunology and vaccine development for over 20 years. He joins the Company from Merck Research Laboratories where, as Executive Director and head of the Global Strategic Regulatory Development, he oversaw the development of innovative vaccines including vaccines against Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), Rotavirus and combination pediatric vaccines.
"Dramatic advances in immune biology have set the stage for potent and specific new products for diseases that affect large populations today, as well as for emerging diseases," said Augustine Lawlor, general partner at HealthCare Ventures, which led the financing. "VaxInnate's scientific founders have pioneered these advances. With the appointment of Carlo Russo, the Company has a leader with an outstanding track record in vaccine development."
The Company's scientific founders are Ruslan Medzhitov, Ph.D., professor of Imunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, and Richard Flavell, Ph.D., chairman and professor of Immunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine. Drs. Medzhitov and Flavell also are Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators.
The VaxInnate Approach
VaxInnate's proprietary VaxIne(TM) Platform Technology is based on recent scientific breakthroughs in understanding the molecular basis of innate (natural) immunity and its role in regulating the body's adaptive (acquired) immune response. The Company's products are designed to generate highly potent and specific immune responses by activating both of these arms of the immune system. Specifically, the Company is developing products that combine a disease-specific antigen, to trigger an adaptive immune response, with proprietary compounds called Pathogen-Associated Molecular Patterns (PAMPs), to trigger the response through innate immune pathways.
"VaxInnate has made great progress in establishing its technology platform and in demonstrating proof of concept in preclinical models, which show it can produce potent immune responses with a high degree of tolerability," said Dr. Russo. "With this financing, the Company will expand its scientific team and advance the development of important vaccines for the prevention of infectious diseases and for immune therapy of cancer."
Prior to his tenure at Merck, Dr. Russo held a series of research and academic appointments at the Scripps Research Institute, at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and at the Cornell University Medical School, where he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and faculty member of the Immunology Program at Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Science. Dr. Russo remains an Adjunct Associate Research Professor of Immunology in Medicine at the Weill Medical College, Cornell University.
New Members Appointed to Board of Directors
VaxInnate also announced the appointment of new members to its Board of Directors. These include R. Gordon Douglas, M.D., director of strategic planning at the National Institutes of Health, and former president of Merck's Vaccine Division, Augustine Lawlor, a general partner at HealthCare Ventures, Michael Lytton, partner at Oxford Biosciences, and Franklin Top, Jr., executive vice president and medical director at MedImmune, Inc.
They join existing board members Gregory Gardiner, Ph.D., former managing director of Yale University's Office of Cooperative Research (OCR), and Gregory Weinhoff, M.D., partner at Collinson Howe & Lennox.
About VaxInnate
Founded in 2001, VaxInnate Corporation is a private biotechnology company focused on exploiting the principles of innate immunity to provide an entirely new technology platform for the development and commercialization of next generation prophylactic vaccines and immune therapies. The Company's VaxIne(TM) technology is a proprietary type of vaccine that contains an antigen coupled with Pathogen-Associated Molecular Patterns (PAMPs). The Company intends to launch three internal programs during the course of the next year. For more information on VaxInnate, please visit http://www.vaxinnate.com/.
Contact: Carlo Russo, M.D. President/CEO VaxInnate Corporation 203-785-1421 Matthew Audette Feinstein Kean Healthcare 413-585-8979
VaxInnate CorporationCONTACT: Carlo Russo, M.D., President/CEO of VaxInnate Corporation,+1-203-785-1421; or Matthew Audette of Feinstein Kean Healthcare,+1-413-585-8979
Web site: http://www.vaxinnate.com/
