Immune Design To Advance Vaccines Pipeline With $32M Series B
July 27, 2010 - VentureWire Lifescience
By Brian Gormley
7/27/2010 - Seattle -
Immune Design Corp. has raised a $32 million Series B round to advance its initial vaccines for cancer and infectious disease into clinical trials next year.
New investor ProQuest Investments led the round and was joined by all previous backers: Alta Partners, Column Group and Versant Ventures. The Seattle-based company has now raised a total of $50 million since forming in 2008. Valuation was not disclosed.
The financing gives Immune Design at least two and a half years of funding, said Chief Executive Steven Reed. The company may extend the round through an additional closing, he said.
This round will enable Immune Design to get through Phase II studies with its infectious disease vaccine and into Phase I trials in cancer, Reed said. The company has yet to disclose the specific indications it will target.
Immune Design has two technologies it uses to develop vaccines. One is GLA, a novel, synthetic toll-like receptor 4 agonist that is a next-generation version of an existing adjuvant, controlled by GlaxoSmithKline PLC, called monophosphoryl lipid A, or MPL. MPL is used in GSK's human papillomavirus vaccine Cervarix, which is approved in the U.S.
Immune Design's GLA is compatible with most antigens, according to the company, and has been shown to be safe and well-tolerated in a Phase I study in which it was used with the flu vaccine Fluzone. It is now in a second Phase I study in combination with an undisclosed influenza vaccine, Reed said.
Other venture-funded vaccine companies with new adjuvant technologies include Juvaris BioTherapeutics Inc., which has an adjuvant platform based on cationic-lipid DNA complexes, and Bioscience Vaccines Inc., which plans to use an extracellular-matrix technology from Cook Medical Inc. to develop adjuvants that boost new and existing vaccines.
Immune Design's other technology is a novel delivery vector that has been engineered to target human dendritic cells. The vector also expresses target antigens and immunomodulatory elements to elicit functional and broad-based immunity, the company said. The company is applying the vector technology to cancer indications.
ProQuest General Partner Alain Schreiber is joining the board.
http://immunedesign.com
