University spin-out secures $10m investment from Chinese biopharmaceutical company
University of Birmingham spin-out Revitope Oncology has secured a $10m investment from Chinese biopharmaceutical company Junshi Biosciences.
The $10m direct equity investment, in exchange for 9.9% of total Revitope Oncology shares, is in addition to milestone and upfront payments of up to $800m plus tiered royalties agreed in a collaboration announced in July 2020, which will allow Revitope to leverage its proprietary protein engineering platform and Junshi’s antibody components to deliver precision cancer therapies.
The Revitope technology, known as the T-cell engager antibody circuit (TEAC), splits antibodies into two halves, and programmes each half to recognise a different antigen.
These halves are inactive until they encounter a cancer cell that expresses both antigens, when they reunite and direct an immune response towards the target cell.
Targeting two antigens rather than one provides a unique ‘tumour-specific address’ for solid tumours and therefore avoids the unwanted toxicities in healthy tissues that are common side effects with many cancer therapies.
Revitope originated as a spin-out created by the University of Birmingham and Cancer Research UK, the largest cancer charity in the UK.
The company was formed in 2014 to develop a separate technology that evolved out of a programme of research initiated in 2010 at the university.
It has been successful in developing further technologies, and attracting major research and commercial talent as well as significant investment.
