Microbiotica raises £50m for microbiome-based discovery pipeline
Microbiotica has completed the largest microbiome-related financing in Europe to date, a £50m Series B fundraise which puts the company on track to become a global leader in microbiome precision medicine.
Existing investors Cambridge Innovation Capital, IP Group and Seventure Partners all participated in the international investment syndicate co-led by Flerie Invest, a major Swedish life science investor, and Tencent, a global technology company investing in innovations that help improve human life.
The finance will be invested in Microbiotica’s two lead oral live bacterial therapeutics (LBTs), MB310 and MB097, to Phase 1b clinical studies.
Both products are precision medicines derived by highly accurate clinical microbiome profiling using Microbiotica’s proprietary microbial genomics platform, which links consortia of bacteria with clinical trial outcome data. Both products have also been validated and mechanistically characterised pre-clinically, through in vivo efficacy data and ex vivo human cell data.
MB310 is a fully defined LBT comprising a consortium of bacteria for the treatment of ulcerative colitis (UC), identified as being linked to remission in a UC faecal transplant clinical study.
MB097 is a fully defined LBT comprising a consortium of bacteria at the core of Microbiotica’s clinical microbiome signature predictive of patient response to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy.
Further progress can be expected as the funding expands Microbiotica’s discovery pipeline of biomarkers and LBTs in new disease areas.
Mike Romanos, co-founder and CEO of Microbiotica, said: “This major fundraise is a substantial validation of both our team and our world-leading technology. We are fortunate to have the support from new and current investors who have recognised the importance of the microbiome’s therapeutic potential and Microbiotica’s unique capabilities.
“With this additional investment, we will be able to conduct clinical trials with our lead products in immuno-oncology and ulcerative colitis. We will also expand our portfolio of microbiome-based products which have the potential to benefit patients globally.”
Microbiotica, spun out of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in 2016, has taken microbiome analysis and patient stratification from clinical data to a new level of precision, and translates this into new therapeutics and biomarkers. The Chesterford Research Park company’s proprietary technology is based on comprehensive gut bacterial isolation, its leading database of gut bacterial reference genomes and advanced bioinformatic and machine learning tools.
Carl-Johan Spak, senior advisor at Flerie Invest, said: “There is ever increasing evidence that the microbiome plays an important role in human health and in multiple diseases, providing completely new therapeutic opportunities in biomedicine.
“We believe that Microbiotica’s world-leading platform, comprising its unique microbial genomes database, advanced microbiology and bioinformatics, will lead to breakthrough results and transformational medicines in the microbiome field.”
Robert Tansley, partner at Cambridge Innovation Capital, said: “We are delighted to continue to support the company as it applies its platform to address important diseases areas with precision medicine.”
