BiomeBank is aiming to treat and prevent disease by restoring gut microbial ecology.
BiomeBank, a clinical stage biotechnology company developing a pipeline of microbiome-based therapies will scale up its manufacturing facility with its latest $10.65 million capital raise.
BiomeBank is aiming to treat and prevent disease by restoring gut microbial ecology. The biotechnology company last month received regulatory approval of its donor derived microbiome drug product.
The funding will allow the biotechnology company to scale its GMP manufacturing facility increasing global supply of its recently approved donor derived microbiome-based therapy and further develop its second-generation therapies.
The additional capital will support the company to reformulate its approved product into a freeze-dried and encapsulated therapy that can be taken orally.
The funds will also be used to progress the drug discovery and development programs for its cultured “second-generation” microbiome-based therapies. This includes BB265, its cultured therapy for ulcerative colitis to allow BiomeBank to conduct its first human clinical trial.
Investors that participated in the capital raise include Ellerston Capital and the South Australian Venture Capital Fund, managed by Artesian Venture Partners. The Hospital Research Foundation, who provided founding seed capital and additional support to the company since 2018 committed further capital to this investment round.
BiomeBank Chair Mr Chris Hall says, “This funding is an important validation that despite the difficult economic period we are in with capital markets, investors can see the value and potential in biotechnology companies like BiomeBank here in Australia.
“Australia has many advantages including first class biotechnology researchers and a fantastic health care system that supports research and development as well as clinical trials. We are part of an expanding and rapidly developing biotechnology scene that is now capitalising on the strengths that Australia has.”
BiomeBank has multiple partnerships with leading research organisations, including research collaborations with the Hudson Institute of Medical Research and RMIT university for microbiome drug discovery and the supply of the approved product to support of the Microbial Restoration in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (MIRO) study, the world’s first pivotal trial demonstrating microbiome restoration in the treatment of Crohn’s disease in collaboration with St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne and The Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
BiomeBank co-founder, CEO and Managing Director Dr Sam Costello said, “This funding is critical for us to fulfil our mission to treat disease by restoring gut microbial ecology. We are doing this firstly through the supply of our approved donor derived microbial therapy to patients in Australia and then to other countries in our region.
“The capital raise is also crucial for progressing our second-generation cultured therapies that we have developed from our large culture collection of individual bacteria isolated from screened donors.”
BiomeBank has a large culture collection of bacteria strains derived from healthy stool donors, these funds can be used to develop these isolates into defined “second generation” therapies.
Further reading
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