Algenex has announced the end of a financing round, obtaining approximately €4 million.
The new funds will allow the scale-up of Algenex’s proprietary CrisBio baculovirus-expression platform ahead of an anticipated submission to the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The submission will be of a CrisBio-based minor species vaccine.
CrisBio is a scalable insect-based protein production system that Algenex claims can deliver up to 20x more per volume unit than insect cells cultured in bioreactors.
The funds will also support further commercial roll-out of Algenex’s TopBac system, a plug and play patented technology that they say increases the productivity of existing baculovirus systems.
The financing was led by Cleon Capital and Vita Advisory and was funded primarily by some notable biotech investors and executives with existing investors also participating in the round.
Both Cleon and Vita expressed that what convinced them to invest was the company’s potential to improve the production of vaccines.
The Spanish private biotechnology company, a specialist in recombinant biologics production, has also made some changes to its executive team, appointing Claudia Jimenez as General Manager and Virginia Gonzalez as CFO.
Furthermore, José M Escribano, founder and until recently Scientific Advisor to the company, has joined Algenex on a permanent basis as Chief Scientific Officer, and Romy M Dalton, who was previously operations manager, will take up the COO position.
