Oxford, UK-based Evox Therapeutics has raised £35 million to help advance its exosome-based therapeutics pipeline.
The company received “significant new investments” from GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Cowen Healthcare Investments, alongside investments from Panacea Healthcare Venture, Borealis Ventures, and a small number of private investors, in the financing round, which was led by Redmile Group.
Existing investors, Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI) and Oxford University also participated, with the former having already streamed £10 million into the firm.
Evox is engineering exosomes, the body’s natural vesicular delivery system, to enable a wide variety of drugs to reach previously inaccessible tissues and compartments, such as crossing the blood brain barrier to deliver drugs to the central nervous system, intracellular delivery of biologics, and extra-hepatic delivery of RNA therapeutics.
The firm is developing its own proprietary pipeline of exosome-based therapeutics for the treatment of rare, life-threatening diseases with significant unmet need, as well as partner with major pharmas “to fully exploit the use of exosome-based therapeutics for the treatment of a wide variety of other diseases.”
The new investment will be used to progress several proprietary rare disease assets towards the clinic and further develop the exosome drug platform.
“We believe exosomes represent an important emerging therapeutic approach with potentially broad applicability, and we are enthusiastic to partner with the Evox team,” said Jeremy Green, Founder & Portfolio Manager of Redmile Group.
