Avectas collects $10m

Avectas, an Ireland-based cell engineering platform developer spun out of National University of Ireland (NUI) Maynooth, has closed a $10m round led by private investor Séamus Mulligan that involved a group of unnamed biotech-focused backers.
Founded in 2012 as Profector Life Sciences, Avectas has built a cell engineering platform called Solupore that enables drug developers to create therapeutic cells by injecting advanced molecules including proteins or messenger RNA into cellular subtypes such as immune system T-cells.
The fresh supply of equity will drive Avectas’s plans to accelerate product development, as well as the scale-up and commercialisation of the Solupore platform.
Avectas was co-founded by Shirley O’Dea, a senior lecturer in NUI Maynooth’s Department of Biology, along with Michael Maguire, a former PhD student at Maynooth who leads the spinout as chief executive.
Avectas raised $2.4m in 2015 through a collaboration agreement with therapeutics developer Adapt Pharma, now a subsidiary of speciality biopharmaceuticals firm Emergent BioSolutions.
Adapt Pharma then supplied Avectas with €1.5m ($1.8m) of a $1.9m convertible debt round in March 2018 that was converted to equity months later, when it also exchanged $4.2m in notes from a 2017 round for which further details could not be ascertained.
Avectas also raised $1m in funding in 2018 from convertible notes exercised by unnamed non-controlling shareholders. Adapt Pharma owned a 61.2% equity stake in Avectas as of May 2018.