TIDMPRTC
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PureTech Health PLC
06 June 2016
PureTech Health plc
PureTech's Vedanta Biosciences Raises $50 Million to Further
Advance Microbiome Platform and Pipeline
PureTech Health plc ("PureTech", LSE: PRTC), a
cross-disciplinary healthcare company developing medicines at the
interface of the gut, brain and immune system, is pleased to note
that Vedanta Biosciences, a PureTech business pioneering the
development of a new class of therapies designed to modulate the
human microbiome, has raised $50 million in new equity investments.
New investors Rock Springs Capital, Health For Life Capital
(Seventure) and Invesco Asset Management were joined by PureTech in
the financing.
Daphne Zohar, CEO of PureTech said: "Vedanta is a leader in the
microbiome-immune field and its platform enables activation and
inhibition of the immune response using live bacteria, with
applications in indications such as allergy and autoimmune
disorders, infection and immuno-oncology. This successful
fundraising will carry Vedanta through multiple clinical studies in
a range of indications."
The full text of the announcement from Vedanta Biosciences is as
follows:
Vedanta Biosciences Closes $50 Million Financing to Advance
Microbiome Therapeutics
The funding will accelerate infectious and autoimmune disease
programs to the clinic and support scale up of the company's
technology platform
Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 6, 2016 - Vedanta Biosciences,
pioneering the development of a new class of therapies designed to
modulate the human microbiome, today announced that it has raised
$50 million in new equity investments. New investors Rock Springs
Capital, Invesco Asset Management and Health For Life Capital
(Seventure) were joined by PureTech in the financing. Proceeds from
the financing will be used to advance multiple clinical studies in
infectious and autoimmune diseases and to scale the company's
technology platform.
"We are grateful for the strong support from venture and leading
public healthcare investors who share our vision to take the
microbiome field beyond faecal transplants and into rationally
defined bacterial consortia," said Bernat Olle, Ph.D., CEO of
Vedanta Biosciences. "This financing positions us to advance
multiple candidates that have emerged from our discovery platform
into clinical trials."
Vedanta Biosciences has built a proprietary platform for the
discovery, development, and manufacturing of drugs based on live
commensal microbes. Using its platform, Vedanta has isolated a vast
collection of human-associated bacterial strains, characterised how
the immune system recognises and responds to these microbes, and
generated a pipeline of drug candidates consisting of defined
bacterial consortia in development for infectious disease, immune
tolerance, inflammation, and immuno-oncology. Vedanta's platform is
built on pioneering work published in Science, Nature and Cell,
among other peer-reviewed journals. The Company attracted the first
large deal with a pharmaceutical company in the microbiome field in
a landmark licensing agreement with Johnson & Johnson with
up-front and milestone payments of up to $339 million. The Company
recently expanded into a new headquarters and research and
development facility in Cambridge, MA, including a state-of-the-art
Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) facility for fully integrated
discovery and production of live bacterial drugs.
About Vedanta Biosciences
Vedanta Biosciences is pioneering a novel class of therapies
designed to modulate pathways of interaction between the human
microbiome and the host immune system. The first to rationally
design a drug candidate based on consortia of human commensal
bacteria, Vedanta has capabilities that enable discovery,
development, and manufacturing of drugs based on live commensal
microbes. Vedanta is advancing a pipeline of product candidates
designed to treat autoimmune, inflammatory and infectious diseases,
which have been developed using Vedanta's proprietary technology
platform.
Vedanta Biosciences was founded by PureTech Health (PureTech
Health plc, PRTC.L) and a group of leading experts in immunology
and microbiology. Vedanta's scientific co-founders have pioneered
the fields of innate immunity, Th17 and regulatory T cell biology,
and include Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov (Professor of Immunobiology at
Yale), Dr. Alexander Rudensky (tri-institutional Professor at the
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute, the Rockefeller University and
Cornell University), Dr. Dan Littman (Professor of Molecular
Immunology at NYU), Dr. Brett Finlay (Professor at the University
of British Columbia) and Dr. Kenya Honda (Professor, School of
Medicine, Keio University). Vedanta's Board of Directors includes
Board Chairman Christopher Viehbacher, Managing Partner at Gurnet
Point Capital and former CEO and Member of the Board of Directors
of Sanofi; Dr. Bennett Shapiro, former Executive Vice President of
Merck; Dr. John LaMattina, former President of research and
development at Pfizer and David Steinberg, Co-Founder of Vedanta
and Executive Vice President at PureTech.
About PureTech Health
PureTech Health (PureTech Health plc, PRTC.L) is a
cross-disciplinary healthcare company focused on areas of growing
scientific and technical insights that it believes are at an
important inflection point, including the central nervous,
gastro-intestinal and immune systems, and the interactions and
signalling between them. PureTech has approximately 20 clinical
studies across its pipeline targeting multi-billion dollar market
opportunities, including five human proof-of-concept studies and
multiple pivotal or registration study readouts expected in the
next two years. While inevitably some technologies will not advance
to commercialisation, PureTech's approach preserves its options as
most of the cash resides on a PureTech parent company level,
allowing PureTech to build value and divert cash to its most
successful programs as milestones are achieved. PureTech has over
220 patents and patent applications. PureTech's leading team and
board, along with an advisory network of more than 60 expert
founder-scientists and advisors across multiple disciplines, gives
PureTech access to potentially ground-breaking science and
technological innovation. With healthcare undergoing major
transformation, PureTech believes it is well positioned to develop
and launch medicines for the 21st century. For more information,
visit www.puretechhealth.com and connect with us on Twitter.
Ownership Information
Of the approximately $50 million raised in this financing,
Invesco will contribute approximately $11 million for the purchase
of an aggregate of 485,651 preferred shares. Invesco is a
substantial shareholder of PureTech pursuant to the Listing Rules,
and thus this transaction is a smaller related party transaction
falling within the scope of Listing Rule 11.1.10R. As a result of
PureTech's equity contribution of approximately $30 million,
PureTech's percentage ownership of Vedanta will be 75.4% on a
diluted basis(1) . Additionally, PureTech's ownership adjusted
value in Vedanta will increase by approximately $37 million from
the previously reported balance(2) . All contributions will be made
in two equal tranches.
(1) This calculation of PureTech's holding includes issued and
outstanding shares as well as options to purchase shares, but
excludes unallocated shares authorised to be issued pursuant to
equity incentive plans.
(2) Ownership adjusted value represents PureTech's interest in
the equity value of Vedanta = (Business Enterprise Value - Debt +
Cash) x PureTech's percentage ownership after additional equity
contribution.
Forward Looking Statement
This press release contains statements that are or may be
forward-looking statements, including statements that relate to the
company's future prospects, developments and strategies. The
forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and
are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could
cause actual results, performance and achievements to differ
materially from current expectations, including, but not limited
to, those risks and uncertainties described in the risk factors
included in the regulatory filings for PureTech Health plc. These
forward-looking statements are based on assumptions regarding the
present and future business strategies of the company and the
environment in which it will operate in the future. Each
forward-looking statement speaks only as at the date of this press
release. Except as required by law and regulatory requirements,
neither the company nor any other party intends to update or revise
these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new
information, future events or otherwise.
# # #
For further information, please contact:
PureTech
Julie DiCarlo, Senior Vice President,
Communications and Investor Relations +1 617 456 0032
FTI Consulting (Communications
adviser to PureTech) +44 (0)20 3727
Ben Atwell / Matthew Cole 1000
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
END
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