Vaccine company SutroVax Inc. (South San Francisco, Calif.) raised $85 million in an oversubscribed series C round led by new investor TPG. Also participating were new investors Medicxi and Foresite as well as all existing investors including Abingworth, Longitude Capital, Frazier Health Care Partners, Pivotal bioVenture Partners, Roche Venture Fund and CTI Life Sciences Fund.
SutroVax's lead program is a broad-spectrum pneumococcal conjugated vaccine (PCV). The candidate was generated using a platform which conjugates pneumococcus-derived polysaccharides onto carrier proteins via the incorporation of non-native amino acids (nnAA) as conjugation anchors.
SutroVax previously told BioCentury that based on unpublished preclinical data, it believes the vaccine could replace Prevnar 13, the standard of care for pneumococcal infection, from Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) (see BioCentury, March 24, 2017).
At the time of its series B funding last March, President and CEO Grant Pickering told BioCentury SutroVax expected to file an IND for the program in 2019. On today's news, he said the company is not providing updated guidance on the IND timeline, but expects the latest round to bring the program through Phase II testing.
Abingworth's Kurt von Emster, who is also SutroVax's former chairman, said it became increasingly clear from preclinical data that the PCV program is positioned it to be a world-leading product, adding "the supply chain is the only thing that would hold us back from being a leading program."
Funds from the series C round will be "largely dedicated" to establishing a supply chain, according to Pickering.
A partnership with contract manufacturing organization Lonza Group Ltd. (SIX:LONN), also announced Thursday, will provide a "pharma-worthy" scalable GMP supply chain, Pickering said. PCV manufacturing, including conjugation development and microbial manufacturing, will be housed at Lonza's Visp, Switzerland facility.
von Emster said additional terms of the deal are undisclosed.
By establishing its GMP supply chain while PCV is still in preclinical development, the transition through the clinic and to market is expected to be smoother, according to von Emster. The lack of scalable manufacturing capabilities is a limitation many biotechs are saddled with, which decreases their attractiveness to potential acquirers that would be expected to provide such capabilities or allocate funds to build them.
SutroVax also announced Thursday that Medicxi's Moncef Slaoui, former chairman of the vaccines division of GlaxoSmithKline plc (LSE:GSK; NYSE:GSK), was appointed chairman.
TPG's Heath Lukatch will join SutroVax's board as a member. Medicxi's Francesco de Rubertis will join the board as an observer.
In addition to PCV, SutroVax has multiple undisclosed programs in preclinical testing with undisclosed timelines, according to Pickering.
Thursday's series C round brings SutroVax's total raised capital to over $170 million. SutroVax was spun out of Sutro Biopharma Inc. (South San Francisco, Calif.) in 2013 (see BioCentury, Nov. 3, 2014).