The Series A financing round was co-led by Adjuvant Capital, AXA IM Alts and the Novo Holdings REPAIR Impact Fund. The proceeds will enable LimmaTech Biologics (“LimmaTech”) to advance its proprietary technology platform and accelerate its pipeline of preclinical and clinical vaccine candidates against increasingly dangerous bacterial infections, including programmes addressing shigellosis, gonorrhoea and other infections.
The Series A is the first venture-backed round of funding for LimmaTech since it was spun out of GlycoVaxyn, its predecessor company that was acquired by GSK in 2015. LimmaTech’s leadership team brings in-depth bacterial vaccine development and manufacturing expertise, having sponsored and led several clinical trials around the world.
LimmaTech’s pipeline includes drug candidates that target life-threatening bacterial infections where resistance is rising and includes vaccines against Shigella and gonorrhoea. Later-stage clinical development efforts will focus on the company’s Shigella vaccine programme. which LimmaTech developed as part of a joint collaboration with GSK, and recently exclusively in-licensed. The company expects to announce preliminary results from the Shigella programme’s ongoing Phase 2 clinical trial in the second half of 2023.
Camilla Petrycer, Principal at Novo Holdings and the REPAIR Impact Fund, said: “We are thrilled to support LimmaTech’s pipeline of much needed vaccine candidates, with the potential to significantly improve health outcomes globally. The investment reflects Novo Holdings’ continued commitment to tackling antimicrobial resistance, and we believe that with its outstanding record of success in the vaccine field, its seasoned leadership and its promising technology, LimmaTech represents a very attractive investment opportunity, which we are pleased to pursue in partnership with leading investors.”
As part of the company’s next phase of corporate growth, LimmaTech has welcomed seasoned biotech industry leader Dr. Franz-Werner Haas as CEO.
Dr. Franz-Werner Haas, CEO of LimmaTech, said: “We are very enthusiastic about partnering with Novo Holdings as a visionary and farsighted investor that actively supports the development of treatments for neglected diseases and at the same time systematically fights the immense but often overlooked problem of antimicrobial resistance, which is a threat to public health globally. In this sense, the investment brings much more than just financial means.”
Aleks Engel, Partner, REPAIR Impact Fund, added: “LimmaTech is a tremendously exciting company that we are pleased to back. We initiated the negotiations with LimmaTech before we decided to put new investment activity on pause from the REPAIR Impact Fund. With 12 companies in the REPAIR portfolio, including LimmaTech, we will now focus on supporting these companies while in tandem advocating for new payment models for infectious disease agents to pave the way for attracting more fresh capital to the acutely underfunded therapeutic area. We are looking forward to working with the LimmaTech team and supporting it in advancing its pipeline to benefit people with and at risk of very serious infections that are difficult to treat.”
Concurrent with the financing, Kabeer Aziz, Partner at Adjuvant Capital, Zina Affas Besse, Partner at AXA IM Alts, and Camilla Petrycer, Principal at Novo Holdings, will join LimmaTech’s Board of Directors.
About Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)
AMR is responsible for approximately five million deaths annually.[1] Nearly one million of these deaths occur among children younger than 5 years, and these numbers are rising at an alarming rate. Treatment with antibiotics has historically been able to reliably stop bacteria from growing or kill these pathogens, but inappropriate or excessive use of antibiotics has caused bacteria to develop natural resistance to these agents. As a result, infections that were once easily treatable have now become difficult if not impossible to cure. As a leading example of this threat to global health, half of the approximately 700,000 annual[2] gonorrhoea infections in the United States are already resistant to antibiotics as of today, and there is a real threat of gonorrhoea soon becoming untreatable.[3] This development is also projected for a growing number of other infections, including Shigella species, spanning both high-income and low- and middle-income countries. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified AMR as a serious threat to public health due to resistance to reserve antibiotics. Shigella species are responsible for approximately 450,000[4] infections in the United States alone and 700,000[5] deaths globally each year. For children, it is the most common bacterial cause of diarrhoeal death worldwide.[6] The discovery of new antibiotics, while promising, has not kept pace with the growth of AMR, making the development of vaccines against multidrug-resistant pathogens an essential component of any strategy to contain this deadly global health threat.
About LimmaTech Biologics AG
LimmaTech Biologics AG is applying its deep expertise in engineering complex carbohydrate molecules to develop next-generation vaccines to prevent life-threatening diseases. Spun out from GlycoVaxyn after that company was acquired by GSK, LimmaTech Bio is advancing its own proprietary clinical pipeline to halt the increasing threat of global infections due to emerging antimicrobial resistance and sexually transmitted infections such as gonorrhoea, alongside partnered programmes with GSK. LimmaTech is committed to translating novel scientific concepts into highly effective vaccines that benefit humanity. For more information, please visit https://lmtbio.com/company/
About the REPAIR Impact Fund
The REPAIR (Replenishing and Enabling the Pipeline for Anti-Infective Resistance) Impact Fund was established by Novo Holdings in 2018 with the purpose of increasing humanity’s therapeutic arsenal in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. With a total commitment of USD 165 million, the Fund invests in start-ups, early-stage companies and corporate spin-outs in Europe and the United States and gives priority to first-in-class therapies, covering small molecules, biologics and new modalities, from the early stage of drug development to the early stages of clinical development. The Fund focuses on priority pathogens as defined by the World Health Organization and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a catalogue of 18 families of bacterial and fungal pathogens that pose the greatest threat to human health.
For more information: REPAIR Impact Fund
Further information
Marie-Louise Jersin, Senior Communications Partner, +45 3049 4957, maj@novo.dk
[1] Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators (2022). Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis. Lancet, 399(10325), 629–655. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02724-0
[2] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (16 May 2023). National overview of STDs, 2021. Retrieved 5 October 2023 from https://www.cdc.gov/std/statistics/2021/overview.htm
[3] Alirol E, Wi TE, Bala M, Bazzo ML, Chen XS, Deal C et al. (2017). Multidrug-resistant gonorrhea: a research and development roadmap to discover new medicines. PLoS Medicine, 14(7), e1002366. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002366
[4] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (6 April 2023). Questions & Answers. Retrieved August 5 October 2023 from https://www.cdc.gov/shigella/general-information.html
[5] World Health Organization. (24 March 2022). Extensively drug-resistant Shigella sonnei infections – Europe – European Region (EURO). Retrieved 5 October 2023 from https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2022-DON364
[6] Fleming JA, Gurley N, Knudson S, Kabore L, Bawa JT et al. (2023). Exploring Shigella vaccine priorities and preferences: results from a mixed-methods study in low- and middle-income settings. Vaccine: X, 15, 100368. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvacx.2023.100368