Nouscom raises $72m in Series C financing round to develop cancer vaccines
Swiss biotech Nouscom has raised €67.5m ($72m) in a Series C funding round co-led by Andera Partners, Bpifrance and M Ventures. Revelation Partners, Indaco Venture Partners, Panakès Partners, X-Gen Ventures, 5AM Ventures, EQT Life Sciences, Versant Ventures and other undisclosed investors took part in the financing round. The last time the company took part in a financing venture was six years ago when it raised $49m in a Series B in November 2017. The company intends to use the funds to advance its clinical plans, including the Phase II trial (NCT04041310) evaluating the off-the-shelf vaccine NOUS-209 targeting 209 shared neoantigens. The trial involves a combination with MSD’s checkpoint inhibitor Keytruda (pembrolizumab) for treating metastatic colorectal cancer with mismatch repair/microsatellite instability. In May 2022, Nouscom gained US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for an IND involving VAC85135, a vaccine exclusively licensed to Janssen. The viral vector-based cancer vaccine went into Phase I clinical trials (NCT05444530) last year and has a primary completion date of January 16, 2026. According to a report on GlobalData’s Pharma Intelligence Centre, sales of immuno-oncology products, which include cancer vaccines, are forecast to exceed $140bn in sales by 2027. GlobalData is the parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology. In the announcement accompanying the Series C fundraising round, Bpifrance senior investment director Thibaut Roulon said: “We consider Nouscom’s neoantigen cancer vaccine platform to be one of the most promising. It is backed by excellent science and increasingly promising clinical data. The next couple of years will be exciting as ongoing clinical trials complete and further validate its potential.”
The company intends to use the funds to advance its cancer vaccine clinical pipeline, including a colorectal cancer vaccine.
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