Syncona funding Gyroscope and Achilles – Syncona has announced two deals this morning.
The first is a £48m commitment to Gyroscope Therapeutics, making up most of a £50.4m Series B financing. This brings Syncona’s total commitment to Gyroscope since foundation to £82.0m and it owns an 80 per cent stake in the business. Syncona is holding this at cost within its NAV. The other £2.4m invested today is coming from Cambridge Innovation Capital.
Gyroscope is a leading clinical-stage, retinal gene therapy company targeting the treatment of dry age-related macular degeneration (dry-AMD), one of the leading cause of blindness and for which there is currently no therapy. Gyroscope’s approach represents one of the first potential applications of gene therapy beyond rare diseases. Its manufacturing and surgical platform allows product development at commercial scale and quality, which will support the company’s ambition to deliver treatments to patients in a disease impacting more than 35 million people worldwide.
The Series B financing is expected to allow the Gyroscope to complete its phase 1/2 study, commence its phase 2 study and expand the use of its surgical delivery platform in the clinic to further establish safe, consistent delivery of gene therapy to the retina.
Khurem Farooq, chief executive officer of Gyroscope, said: “We are grateful for the confidence Syncona and CIC have shown in Gyroscope as we continue to deliver on our promise to bring gene therapy beyond rare disease to help the millions of people worldwide with dry-AMD. Both our investigational therapy GT005 and the Orbit Surgical Delivery System are being used to treat patients in early-stage clinical trials and this funding will allow us to collect and analyse safety data needed to then move into larger trials and eventually bring them to market.”
Achilles
Syncona is also the largest investor in a £100m Series B financing for Achilles Therapeutics, committing £35m, with the remainder raised from specialist global institutional investors.
Syncona has written up its existing investment in Achilles by £23.4m (3.5p per share); representing a 91.4 per cent uplift to its previous holding value (£25.6m). Syncona’s ownership stake in the business will be 44 per cent.
Achilles is a biopharmaceutical company developing personalised cancer immunotherapies. Other investors in the business include RA Capital, Forbion, Invus, Perceptive Advisors and Redmile Group.
Achilles is developing personalised T-cell therapies for solid tumours targeting clonal neoantigens; protein markers unique to each patient that are present on the surface of all cancer cells. Achilles uses DNA sequencing data, together with a proprietary bioinformatics platform, to identify clonal neoantigens specific to the patient. By targeting multiple clonal neoantigens that are present on all cancer cells, but not on healthy cells, Achilles is seeking to deliver individualised treatments to target and destroy tumours without harming healthy tissues.
The Series B financing brings Achilles’ total committed funding to £128.3m. Proceeds from the financing are expected to enable the business to deliver two human proof-of-concept studies in Achilles’ first two programmes in non-small cell lung cancer and melanoma. There are 228,150 patients newly diagnosed with lung cancer in the US each year and 96,480 patients diagnosed with melanoma. The company expects its first two programmes to enter the clinic this year. In addition, the financing will enable Achilles to continue building out its manufacturing capabilities as well as broaden its growing solid tumour pre-clinical product pipeline.
Dr Iraj Ali, CEO of Achilles Therapeutics, said: “Achilles is leading the next wave of immuno-oncology drug development. We have moved from concept to clinic-ready in less than three years. We are extremely pleased to welcome this excellent group of new investors to Achilles and I would like to personally thank our existing founding investors for their continued support. With this fundraising we have made a clear statement about the scale and nature of our ambitions to bring novel cancer therapies rapidly to patients with a high unmet medical need.”
SYNC : Syncona funding Gyroscope and Achilles
Click here to subscribe for free equity research on investment trusts, funds and listed companies.