Clinical-stage biotech Alchemab Therapeutics has been awarded £25 million in investment from the British Business Bank.
This represents the Bank’s largest investment in a life sciences company to date.
Alchemab is seeking to harness the power of the immune system and cure disease through ‘adaptive’ immunity by developing pioneering treatments to overcome or resist chronic conditions like cancer.
This funding will help the company develop new treatments and expand its unique antibody database to more than 1 billion sequences.
Alchemab uses its Resiliome™ platform to find and develop new medicines. The platform uses complex AI algorithms to identify natural antibodies in people with unusual resilience to hard-to-treat diseases.
This investment builds on the success of the company’s first asset, ATLX-1282 – a first-in-class antibody treatment being clinically tested for ALS.
This additional funding brings Alchemab’s total Series A investment to date to £109 million. It will enable the company to enhance its antibody database from 500 million to a billion antibody sequences and advance additional candidates into clinical development.
Dr Jane Osbourn, CEO and co-founder, said: “We are delighted that British Business Bank has recognised the importance of enabling Alchemab to grow and thrive here in the UK.
“This investment provides further validation of the sustainable, long-term potential of our drug discovery platform and will enable us to further accelerate our pipeline of first-in-class antibody therapeutics for conditions with significant unmet need.”
Dame Kate Bingham, Managing Partner at SV Health Investors and Chair of Alchemab’s board of directors, said: “The UK life sciences sector has the expertise, creativity and commercial potential to build globally significant biotech companies, and Alchemab is determined to be one of them.
“This investment by the British Business Bank demonstrates the importance of providing capital to allow innovative biotechs to scale here, and we are proud to be building the company’s future in the UK.”
Charlotte Lawrence, Managing Director of Direct Equity at British Business Bank said, “Alchemab sits at the cutting edge of UK scientific capability, integrating deep sequencing and lab-based validation to harness the body ‘s natural defences against disease.
“This landmark £25m investment demonstrates our commitment to providing the long-term capital necessary for the UK ‘s most innovative biotech firms to advance complex pipelines in the UK. “
Dr Carmine Circelli, Senior Investment Director, Life Sciences at British Business Bank said, “Alchemab is yet another example of the UK’s strength in leveraging technology in life sciences.
“By combining one of the world ‘s largest proprietary antibody datasets with advanced AI, the company has developed a powerful platform with the potential to unlock new treatments. Our investment will help convert promising results into high value medical discoveries.”
Founded in 2019, Alchemab is a biotechnology company developing new medicines by studying protective antibodies found in people who are naturally resistant to diseases.
