OBN 2012 Annual Awards recognise PsiOxus for £22 Million ($34 Million) in Series B Financing to Drive Clinical Development for Oncolytic Vaccine.
Mercia Fund Management MD Mark Payton attended the OBN 2012 Annual Awards Dinner last night and is delighted to announce that PsiOxus Therapeutics, Ltd. (PsiOxus) won the Best Biotech Fund Raiser award.
PsiOxus was formed to develop and commercialise technologies, generated at the University of Birmingham and Imperial College, for the treatment of cancer. Originally seed funded by Imperial Innovations and Mercia Fund Management, Psioxus announced in July 2012, that it had closed a Series B round of equity financing totalling £22 million ($34 million).
The financing round enables PsiOxus to advance the clinical development of ColoAd1, a systemically available oncolytic vaccine, through a series of phase I and phase II clinical trials for the treatment of colorectal and other forms of cancer.
Commenting on the award win, Mark Payton, MD of Mercia Fund Management said:“PsiOxus is making excellent progress with ColoAd1 for the global cancer market, and we are delighted that we were part of the team that funded them at the crucial early stage.”
Working with eight Midlands’ universities, Mercia Fund Management has supported spin-outs from seed to successful exit through investment, sourcing the right people to manage the funded company, and providing strategic input.
In July 2012, Mercia Fund Management launched Mercia Growth Fund – a hybrid SEIS/EIS fund offering a unique opportunity for attractive returns from a balanced portfolio of companies, whilst taking advantage of income tax, inheritance tax and capital gains tax benefits under the Enterprise Investment Scheme (‘EIS’) and Seed EIS (‘SEIS’).
-END-
About PsiOxus Therapeutics, Ltd.
PsiOxus Therapeutics is an Oxford, UK based development stage biotechnology company using non-traditional approaches to develop novel therapeutics that address cancer and other clinically unmet diseases. ColoAd1 is an oncolytic vaccine for the systemic treatment of metastatic cancer, which has demonstrated exceptional anti-cancer properties in late pre-clinical development and will begin clinical development later in 2012. MT-102 is a dual action Anabolic Catabolic Transforming Agent (ACTA) in phase II clinical development for the treatment of cachexia and sarcopenia. The Company is also developing treatments based upon the research phase vaccine platform PolySTAR, which combines recombinant viral vectors with polymers to shield them from the immune system, and the research phase adjuvant and immunotherapeutic platform PolyMAP, which combines polymers with synthetic adjuvants to significantly enhance the effectiveness of vaccines.
Dr John Beadle is CEO of PsiOxus. Dr Beadle was previously a co-founder of PowderMed, which was sold to Pfizer, Inc. for more than $300 million in 2006. Dr Michael Moore, the former CEO of Piramed, which was acquired by Roche in 2008, serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors.
PsiOxus is advised by a distinguished Scientific Advisory Board including the original Hybrid founders, Prof Len Seymour (Chair of Gene Medicine at Oxford University and Secretary General of the European Society for Gene and Stem Cell Therapy) and Dr Kerry Fisher (an internationally-recognized specialist in molecular medicine, also of Oxford University); and the original Myotec scientific founders, Prof Andrew Coats (Norwich Research Park Professor-at-Large, University of East Anglia) and Prof Stefan Anker (Professor of Cardiology and Cachexia Research at Charité Medical School, Berlin and President of the Society on Sarcopenia, Cachexia and Wasting Diseases).
About Mercia Fund Management
Mercia Fund Management is a venture capital fund manager with over £14 million under active management.
We provide investment capital to businesses seeking early stage (via Mercia Fund 1 which is partnered with eight universities), expansion and development capital to unquoted cash generative UK based companies.