What You Ought to Know:
– Centivax, a biotech firm growing sturdy, common vaccines, in the present day introduced the shut of a $45 million Sequence A led by Steve Jurvetson’s Future Ventures, with participation from NFX, BOLD Capital, Base4, Kendall Capital Companions, Amplify Bio, and current buyers.
– The brand new funding will advance Centivax’s lead common flu vaccine candidate via CMC growth and right into a Part I trial inside eight months.
Centivax Accelerates Common Vaccine Improvement with Broad-Spectrum Pipeline and Strategic Backing
Centivax is pioneering a brand new frontier in immunology via a proprietary computational immune-engineering platform designed to create common vaccines and therapies that present sturdy safety throughout whole classes of fast-evolving threats. Based mostly in South San Francisco, the corporate is advancing a flexible pipeline that spans infectious ailments, oncology, and persistent well being circumstances—positioning itself on the intersection of bioengineering innovation and unmet world well being wants.
On the forefront of this effort is Centivax’s lead scientific candidate for influenza, focusing on a worldwide flu market valued at over $7 billion. The candidate will bear scientific testing utilizing the gold-standard hemagglutination-inhibition (HAI) assay, immediately evaluating its skill to guard towards over 20 influenza strains—together with seasonal, mismatched, and pandemic variants—with that of typical flu vaccines. Preclinical research, together with work in human organoids and animal fashions, have demonstrated cross-strain safety, notably towards high-concern threats corresponding to H5N1 avian influenza.
What distinguishes Centivax is the broad adaptability of its epitope-focusing know-how. Initially designed to beat antigenic drift and escape in viral pathogens, the platform has confirmed extensible throughout a spread of targets, together with RSV/hMPV, herpesviruses, HIV, and malaria. It’s now being leveraged to discover options in oncology, autoimmunity, neurodegeneration, heart problems, and even common antivenoms—underscoring its potential to reshape how drugs responds to each infectious and non-infectious illness burdens.
“This financing positions us to assist the U.S. authorities meet its purpose of a common flu vaccine inside 5 years,” mentioned CEO Dr. Jacob Glanville. “Our platform’s versatility permits us to deal with a spectrum of quickly mutating targets, from viruses to venom toxins.”
The management staff combines deep scientific experience with confirmed execution in biotechnology. Dr. Glanville, who beforehand based Distributed Bio and led over 75 discovery packages in collaboration with main pharmaceutical companions corresponding to Pfizer, Gilead, and Teva, continues to steer Centivax’s scientific imaginative and prescient. Supporting him are key figures corresponding to Dr. Jerald Sadoff, Chief Medical Officer, who has performed a pivotal function within the scientific growth and approval of 14 vaccines—together with Gardasil, Rotateq, and J&J’s COVID-19 vaccine Jcovden—throughout tenures at Merck, Johnson & Johnson, and Crucell.
Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder Dr. Sawsan Youssef, whose immunotherapy work at Pfizer contributed to the event of sasanlimab, brings in depth expertise in translational science. Stephanie Wisner, co-founder and Chief Enterprise Officer, brings a strategic lens from her time at ARCH Enterprise Companions and is the writer of Constructing Backwards to Biotech. They’re joined by Chief Innovation Officer Gus Zeiner, Chief Operations Officer David Tsao, and Chief Know-how Officer Nicholas Bayless.
Centivax’s development has been propelled not solely by enterprise capital but in addition by over $24 million in aggressive, non-dilutive funding. The corporate’s preliminary $2 million award got here via the Invoice & Melinda Gates Basis’s “Grand Problem: Finish the Pandemic Risk,” adopted by vital help from CEPI, the NIH, the Navy Infectious Illnesses Analysis Program, and the U.S. Naval Medical Analysis Command, amongst others.
With a differentiated platform, cross-functional experience, and validation from world scientific and funding establishments, Centivax is positioning itself as a number one drive within the pursuit of common safety towards humanity’s most complicated immunological threats.
