Existing investors OneVentures and UniQuest led the round. New investors, including members of the Vaxxas board and management team, along with individual investors, participated. The company earmarked proceeds to advance its clinical programs, including its needle-free COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
Other potential uses include the installation of the company’s first manufacturing lines. These would offer the capacity to support Vaxxas’ first products through late-stage clinical studies and early commercial production.
“Our confidence has only been reinforced by Vaxxas’ tremendous progress in building a promising clinical pipeline based on its novel HD-MAP vaccination platform,” said Dr. Paul Kelly, founding partner and head of healthcare at OneVentures. “We believe Vaxxas’ needle-free vaccination technology will dramatically improve the availability, efficacy, and safety of vaccines for a range of serious and prevalent diseases, including COVID-19 and influenza.”
More on the Vaxxas vaccine patch
Vaxxas said it expects the financing to accelerate the clinical program for the COVID-19 vaccine patch candidate. The system, based on the company’s proprietary HD-MAP delivery technology, is in Phase I clinical trials. Vaxxas designed its HD-MAP technology to use an ultra-high-density array of micro projections, invisible to the human eye. Applied to the skin as a patch, the system rapidly delivers vaccines to the immune cells below the skin surface.
The company said its technology could potentially improve pandemic and routine vaccination efforts. It offers production efficiencies, breadth and speed of access, plus population coverage.
It delivers HexaPro, a second-generation version of the spike protein used in all major U.S.-approved COVID-19 vaccines.
The company plans to add its $23 million to more than $67 million already provided. That money came through U.S. and Australian government contracts.
In October 2020, Vaxxas received a $22 million award from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) at the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) to support a clinical study for the patch.
“This financing from a strong syndicate of experienced life science investors reflects the significant potential of our considerable product pipeline and novel needle-free vaccination technology,” said David Hoey, CEO of Vaxxas. “With a strong foundation to our HD-MAP platform, we are well positioned to advance multiple product opportunities toward commercial launch. In the near term, we will continue to advance our lead COVID-19 vaccine program along with other clinical initiatives, and execute our go-to-market strategy of building commercial-scale manufacturing capacity and high throughput production lines.”
