New money alert: Cincinnati-based Blue Water Vaccines, a company developing a universal flu vaccine, announced the completion of an oversubscribed $7 million seed round led by CincyTech, FINSMES reports. Additional participants were not disclosed, and this marks the first financing move the company has made thus far.
The company, which is looking to commercialize the treatment, is basing its work on that which was originally developed by theoretical epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta and virologist Craig Thompson's team at the University of Oxford in the U.K. This was after obtaining exclusive rights to the work from the university's research commercialization arm, Oxford University Innovation.
This funding comes between two rounds of preclinical studies, the first of which offered "early validation of the company’s novel approach to vaccine design."
The next preclinical trail will be funded by the seed round, and the company has eyes for a Phase 1 trial in 2020.
“We think it has huge potential,” Mike Venerable, CEO of CincyTech, said in a Cincinnati Business Courier report.
"The payoff could be enormous," the report adds. "Globally, an estimated 1 billion cases of flu every year result in up to 650,000 deaths." The Blue Water Vaccines' drug would protect patients against all strains of influenza.
Blue Water Vaccines CEO Joseph Hernandez said the company has a lot of work ahead.
"The next two years are going to be very telling once we prove the vaccine is effective and gives broad protection against influenza," he said.
