From our sister site, Global Government Venturing.
MGB Biopharma, a UK-based biopharmaceutical company developing anti-infectives, has raised £4m ($6.4m) from a consortium including Scottish Investment Bank (SIB), the investment unit of state-backed Scottish Enterprise.
SIB along with angel networks Archangels, which leverages its deals with debt from SIB, and Tweed Renaissance Investors Capital (TRI Cap) and industrial corporation Barwell invested £2.7m, while state innovation agency Innovate UK, formerly the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), under its Biomedical Catalyst programme provided the remainder as an award earlier in the year.
In July last year, MGB raised £600,000 from Archangel, Tri Cap, Barwell and the SIB’s Scottish Co-investment Fund to take its then total since 2010 to £2.8m.
The money will help develop MGB’s lead antibacterial, MGB-BP-3, in a Phase I trial. Miroslav Ravic, CEO of MGB, said: “The danger posed by antimicrobial resistance to global public health is immense. Without new drugs to treat resistant bacteria we could easily slip into a post-antibiotic era where the chances of dying from a life-threatening infection could increase significantly.”
David Littlejohn, dean of the University of Strathclyde’s Faculty of Science, added: “MGB-BP-3, originally developed at the University and which we licensed to MGB Biopharma, has shown significant potential against C. difficile and a range of other serious Gram-positive hospital-acquired infections.”
