Investment Boosts ADC Therapeutics Development

University of Cambridge spin-out Spirea has secured financing from lead o2h Ventures and Syndicate Room that will be used to enable Spirea’s Antibody Drug Conjugate therapeutic programmes ahead of a significant Seed financing anticipated in 2021. The Company also announced the successful in vivo validation of the platform in proof-of-concept studies using a cancer xenograft model.

Dr Myriam Ouberai, CEO of Spirea, commented: “We have now demonstrated that our ADC technology performs extremely well in vivo. The funding and support from o2h Ventures and Syndicate Room serve as an endorsement of our approach and will allow us to start building a pipeline of exciting therapeutic products based on our validated technology.”

Sunil Shah, CEO at o2h Ventures, said: “Spirea’s potentially transformative approach to addressing the common obstacles faced in ADC development has the potential to disrupt this field entirely, placing the Company in a unique position to address a very significant market opportunity. This is an exciting time for Spirea and we are pleased to be supporting them.”

Spirea has previously received investment from Jonathan Milner, Start Codon, Innovate UK, IP Group and Cambridge Enterprise and is supported by a number of successful, high-profile board members from the life sciences including Jane Dancer (former Chief Business Officer at F-star), Gaynor Fryers (former Vice-President of Business Development at AstraZeneca) and Christine Martin (Deputy Head of Seed Funds at Cambridge Enterprise). Spirea benefits from being part of the healthcare business accelerator Start Codon and the Cambridge Judge Business School Entrepreneurship Centre's Accelerator, Accelerate Cambridge.

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