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MinervaX ApS, a privately held Danish biotech company developing a novel vaccine against Group B Streptococcus (GBS), has completed a €72 million ($76.5 million) financing round.
The equity financing of €22 million ($23.4 million) was co-led by new investors Trill Impact Ventures and Pureos Bioventures and includes existing investors REPAIR Impact Fund (Novo Holdings), Sunstone Life Science Ventures, LF Investment, Wellington Partners, Sanofi Ventures, Adjuvant Capital and Industrifonden. In addition to the equity financing, the European Investment Bank provided a €50 million ($53 million) loan facility.
This year, MinervaX commenced enrolment of pregnant women in its phase 2 clinical trial in Denmark, the U.K., and South Africa and completed the dosing of healthy adult women, previously dosed with its GBS vaccine, in a phase 1 booster clinical trial in the U.K.
The financing will enable MinervaX to advance the late-stage development of its GBS vaccine candidate in preparation for a phase 3 clinical trial. The vaccine candidate was recently awarded PRIME status by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) due to its potential to prevent life-threatening infections in newborn babies.
MinervaX also aims to expand its clinical development team and evaluate the phase 2 clinical data for efficacy and safety ahead of publication next year.
Per Fischer, chief executive officer of MinervaX, said: “We are delighted to announce this financing, which gives us the firepower to accelerate the development of our novel GBS vaccine. GBS can be life-threatening for newborn babies and there is no approved, universally available vaccine to date.
“I would like to thank the investors and the MinervaX team who have worked very hard on our vaccine candidate in preparation for the final stage of clinical development.”