TMV leads
Technomark Medical Ventures (TMV) has announced the completion of a £10m (US$14m) funding round in BioVex, a company developing treatments for cancer and chronic infectious diseases. Other investors included The Merlin Biosciences Fund, West Deutsche Landesbank Girozentrale and GeneChem Management of Montreal, Canada.
The £10m (US$14m) investment will be used to take BioVex's lead programmes, OncoVEX and ImmunoVEX, into clinical development and to fund respective Phase I trials.
BioVex has developed proprietary vectors, based on the common cold sore virus, herpes simplex type 1, for:
'BioVex has made substantial progress since its initial financing of £3m in February 1999, entering two programmes into pre-clinical development and establishing several collaborations,' said Dr Gareth Beynon, chief executive of BioVex.
'This new funding will allow the company to build on these past achievements by advancing, and developing, its lead programmes into proof-of-principle clinical trials.'