Gaithersburg’s VLP Therapeutics Inc. has raised $16 million to take a cancer treatment to the clinic.
The Series A funding round comes from Japanese investors Miyako Capital Co., Sojitz Corp. and Konishiyasu Co., and existing U.S. investors SK Impact Fund, RJ Fund and Robert Hisaoka, the company said Monday.
The 8-year-old vaccine maker, which counts the founders of former Rockville pharmaceutical company Sucampo Pharmaceuticals among its founders, focuses on addressing unmet medical needs. VLP said the funding will help accelerate research and development of its cancer treatment vaccine — a vaccine designed to treat cancer in patients that already have it, rather than a preventative tool — in the U.S. “and move into clinical trials at the earliest date possible.”
The Maryland biotech also said Monday it has tapped venture capitalist Miwa Toyoda, formerly of Jafco Group Co., as its chief business officer “in a bid to accelerate its vaccine research and development projects and expand the portfolio.”
We have reached out to the company about any funding raised prior to this round and will update this post as we hear back.
Former National Institutes of Health researcher Wataru Akahata established VLP in 2013 as co-founder and CEO, a role he still serves in today. Some familiar faces in the Greater Washington biotech scene joined its founder base in 2014: Sucampo's Sachiko Kuno and Ryuji Ueno. Ueno is VLP's chair and chief medical officer.
Kei Tolliver, VLP’s general counsel, and Misako Nakata, its IP counsel, are also co-founders.
VLP is also developing vaccines for malaria, dengue and Covid-19, all using its proprietary platform technologies and all currently in preclinical or early-stage studies.
Its coronavirus program sits under the umbrella of VLP Therapeutics Japan, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Montgomery County biotech that Akahata started in 2020. That business, based in Tokyo, is developing a Covid vaccine using RNA technology with funding support from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development and a manufacturing agreement formed in October with Fujifilm Corp.
Ueno and Kuno, the former couple who founded Sucampo in 2007 and sold it in 2018 for $1.2 billion, are also behind the S&R Foundation. They still own the Evermay estate, Halcyon House and the former Fillmore School in D.C.
The pair first teamed up in Japan, where they launched an anti-glaucoma treatment and established drug company R-Tech Ueno, before moving to Greater Washington in 1995. They founded Sucampo in the U.S. and took it public in 2007, making it an international player in the pharmaceutical industry before walking away from it in 2014.
On the charitable front, their foundation blossomed into a D.C. cornerstone for artists, scientists and social entrepreneurs — and spun out Georgetown nonprofit Halcyon, which has since grown to support startup founders from around the world and is now doubling down on impact investing.
