RCS - IP Group PLC - Portfolio co Microbiotica completes £50m raise

IPAnnouncement

07/03/2022 08:00

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RNS Number : 7748D  IP Group PLC  07 March 2022

 FOR RELEASE ON  7 March 2022

 

 

IP Group plc - Portfolio company Microbiotica
completes £50m fund raise

 

IP Group plc (LSE: IPO) ("IP Group" or "the Group"), the developer of
intellectual property-based businesses, notes that portfolio company
Microbiotica Ltd ("Microbiotica" or "the Company"), a leading player in
discovering and developing microbiome-based therapeutics and biomarkers, has
completed its £50m Series B financing round, the largest microbiome-related
financing in Europe to date.

 

The proceeds will be used to progress Microbiotica's two lead oral Live
Bacterial Therapeutics (LBTs), MB097 and MB310, to Phase 1b clinical studies
as well as to expand its discovery pipeline of biomarkers and LBTs in new
disease areas.

 

IP Group committed £4m to the funding round and, following completion, has an
undiluted beneficial holding of 18.2% in Microbiotica, valued at £16.1m. IP
Group has recorded a net unrealised fair value gain of £2.2m.

 

Dr Sam Williams, Managing Partner of Life Sciences at IP Group plc, said: "As
a founding investor in Microbiotica, our thesis was that, by culturing,
characterising and stratifying the human microbiome, Microbiotica would be
able to identify live biotherapeutics with the greatest chance of clinical
success in the microbiome field. The company's pre-clinical data suggest that,
so far, our thesis is proving correct, and we are delighted that the company's
esteemed new investors are joining us for the next leg of this exciting
journey."

 

Microbiotica, spun out of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, has taken microbiome
analysis and patient stratification from clinical data to a new level of
precision, and translates this into new therapeutics and biomarkers. The
company's proprietary technology is based on comprehensive gut bacterial
isolation, its leading database of gut bacterial reference genomes and
advanced bioinformatic and machine learning tools. Microbiotica has partnered
with leading organisations, such as Cancer Research UK, Cambridge University
Hospitals, University of Adelaide and Genentech.

 

MB097 is a fully defined LBT comprising a consortium of bacteria at the core
of Microbiotica's clinical microbiome signature predictive of patient response
to Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor therapy. MB310 is a fully defined LBT
comprising a consortium of bacteria for the treatment of Ulcerative Colitis
(UC) identified as being linked to remission in a UC faecal transplant
clinical study. Both MB097 and MB310 are precision medicines derived by highly
accurate clinical microbiome profiling using Microbiotica's platform which
links consortia of bacteria with clinical trial outcome data. Both products
have also been validated and mechanistically characterised pre-clinically
through in vivo efficacy data and ex vivo human cell data.

 

The financing round was also supported by new investors Flerie
(https://flerie.com/en/) Invest, Tencent and British Patient Capital
(https://www.britishpatientcapital.co.uk/) as well as existing investors IP
Group, Cambridge Innovation Capital (https://www.cic.vc/) and Seventure
Partners.

 

For more information, please contact:

 

 IP Group plc                                             www.ipgroupplc.com (http://www.ipgroupplc.com)
 Liz Vaughan-Adams, Communications                        +44 (0) 20 7444 0062/+44 (0) 7967 312125
 Charlotte Street Partners
 David Gaffney                                            +44 (0) 7854 609998
 Andrew Wilson                                            +44 (0) 7810 636995

 

Notes for editors

 

About IP Group

 

IP Group is a leading intellectual property commercialisation company which
focuses on evolving great ideas, mainly from its partner universities, into
world-changing businesses. The Group has pioneered a unique approach to
developing these ideas and the resulting businesses by providing access to
business building expertise, capital (through its 100%-owned FCA-authorised
subsidiaries IP Capital and Parkwalk Advisors), networks, recruitment and
business support. IP Group has a strong track record of success and its
portfolio comprises holdings in early-stage to mature businesses across life
sciences and technology. IP Group is listed on the Main Market of the London
Stock Exchange under the code IPO.

 

Group holdings in portfolio companies reflect the undiluted beneficial equity
interest excluding debt, unless otherwise explicitly stated.

 

For more information, please visit our website at www.ipgroupplc.com
(http://www.ipgroupplc.com/) .

 

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