The company behind AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine announced Monday it has purchased Baltimore pharmaceutical startup, Avidea Technologies, for $40 million.
Vaccitech purchased Avidea for about $12.5 million in cash and $27.5 million in Vaccitech shares, marking the firm’s first major acquisition since going public this spring.
Bill Enright, a veteran of Maryland’s life sciences industry, is the CEO of Vaccitech, a U.K. company with 60 U.K. employees based in Oxford. Enright still lives in Maryland and said the acquisition of Avidea will give Vaccitech a U.S. hub.
Avidea has 14 employees in Baltimore, all of whom are expected to keep their jobs, Enright said, adding that Vaccitech “will definitely be adding to this site.” Currently, Avidea works out of the FastForward incubator on the Johns Hopkins medical campus in East Baltimore, as well as a nearby building.
Enright said Avidea has technology that will help Vaccitech develop better immunotherapies and vaccines. Most vaccines stimulate a person’s antibodies to help prevent diseases, Enright said, but Vaccitech and Avidea focus on ways to stimulate T-Cells, which attack diseases currently in the body. A drug that stimulates T-Cells could be used to fight cancer, Human papillomavirus and Hepatitis B, he said.
Vaccitech hopes to have a drug for Hepatitis B commercially ready by 2025 or 2026, Enright said. While Avidea does not currently have any drugs in clinical stages, Enright said Vaccitech plans to use its technologies in drugs that will start clinical trials by late 2020.
“It’s really transformative for the company,” Enright said of Avidea’s technology.
Vaccitech raised about $110 million through an initial public offering in May. Enright said the company raised $168 million in Series B funding a month prior. According to Enright, Avidea had raised approximately $8 million through dilutive and non-dilutive sources prior to this acquisition.
Avidea’s CEO Geoff Lynn will be staying with the company. Lynn told the BBJ in 2018 that he was participating in a research training program at Johns Hopkins when he and some colleagues developed new technologies that they realized could serve as therapies for cancer patients.
“We are excited to become part of Vaccitech and have a shared vision for advancing the next generation of immunotherapies. Vaccitech is a perfect fit for the Avidea team and technology,” Lynn said in a press release. “Our teams are both experts in immunotherapies leveraging T cell and antibody immunity, but we have unique and complementary approaches that we expect will lead to immense synergies.”
