Imperial Innovations leads £2.15M investment in PolyTherics

Imperial Innovations Group plc, the UK's leading technology commercialisation and investment company, has led a £2.15 million funding round alongside ProVen Health VCT Plc. and YFM Equity Partner’s The Capital Fund, for one of its portfolio companies, PolyTherics Ltd, a solution provider to biopharmaceutical companies for the improvement of protein and peptide based drugs.

Innovations has committed £1.2 million in the round. New investor ProVen Health VCT, an international venture capital firm, has invested £0.75 million and existing investor, The Capital Fund, which is managed by YFM Equity Partners, has committed £0.2 million. Following the investment, Innovations will hold a 38.6% stake in the Company.  This investment follows a £3 million financing in February 2010 and a £2.3 million financing in June 2007, both backed by Innovations, Longbow Capital and The Capital Fund.

PolyTherics has developed three proprietary technologies for attaching the polymer Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) to therapeutic peptides and proteins in a targeted fashion. This process, known as PEGylation, slows the elimination of drugs from the body, thereby improving their duration of action and allowing them to be dosed less frequently, which can decrease side effects and improve patient compliance.

PolyTherics has successfully applied its PEGylation technology to a range of existing proteins and peptides, as well as novel protein scaffolds, avoiding the need to reengineer the protein sequence and achieving site-specific conjugation with a highly efficient process.

The funds will be used to apply the company’s proprietary technologies to an expanding range of proteins and peptides and to pursue new applications of these technologies, such as providing a more stable linker for antibody and protein drug conjugates.

Susan Searle, Imperial Innovations’ CEO, said: “PolyTherics is a great example of the further funding and support we are providing to our existing portfolio companies.  The PEGylation technology has great potential within drug therapy and we are pleased to back this experienced management team as PolyTherics expands its unique offering.”

John Burt, PolyTherics’ CEO, said: “This successful fundraising will enable us to expand the application of our PEGylation technologies to novel biomolecules and to use our linker chemistry in new ways and we look forward to forging new collaborations to develop improved therapeutic molecules.”