Biotech firm Pulmocide has received £17m ($27.84m) in series A backing as the Imperial College London (ICL) spin-out heads to the institution’s BioIncubator.
ICL’s tech transfer unit Imperial Innovations invested £4.25m in the round, and was joined by a venture consortium of SV Life Sciences, Fidelity Biosciences, and pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson’s corporate venturing unit J&J Development Corporation.
Pulmocide will be focused on the discovery and development of the next-generation of inhaled medicines for the treatment of infections of the respiratory tract, such as viral and fungal. The firm’s management team, led by Garth Rapeport and Pete Strong, previously co-founded ICL spin-out Respivert, which was acquired by Janssen Biotech in 2010 for £9.5m and provided a 4.7x return for Innovations.
Garth Rapeport, chief executive of Pulmocide, said: “The Pulmocide team has an extensive track record in the discovery of potent long acting medicines for delivery to the lung via the inhaled route of administration. We are gratified to have the support of a leading investor consortium in our efforts to discover highly effective new treatments for life threatening respiratory tract infections.”
