A universal flu vaccine developed by Oxford spinout Vaccitech shows promising results in trials as the firm launches with a $14.5m seed round.
Vaccitech, a biotechnology spinout from Oxford University, has launched with a £10m ($14.5m) seed round backed by Oxford Sciences Innovation, the university’s £320m university venturing fund.
Invesco, Lansdowne Partners and Woodford Investment Management also contributed money.
Vaccitech has developed a universal flu vaccine that has shown promising results in clinical trials. Its vaccine would work every year rather than the current flu vaccine system that requires data analysis of flu strains to predict which strains to immunise against each year.
The spinout is planning to launch phase 2b trials later this year. The development has been led by the Jenner Institute at Oxford.
Vaccitech also has its sights set on other vaccines such as a therapeutic vaccine for prostate cancer.
Sarah Gilbert, co-lead of the Jenner Institute team, said: “To create a vaccine which works against every flu virus, we have targeted two proteins inside the virus which do not change, even as the virus mutates the proteins on its surface.
“This also means the vaccine should work against all human, avian and swine influenza strains.”
Adrian Hill, the other co-lead of the Jenner Institute team, said: “New “checkpoint inhibitor” cancer therapies are proving highly effective at taking the physiological “brakes” off the immune system’s ability to identify and fight tumour cells.
“It is now widely acknowledged that combining current therapies with a vaccine element to focus the immune response on key cancer antigens will increase the success of cancer immunotherapies.”
