Accession Therapeutics Ltd.. (11/21/22). "Press Release: Accession Therapeutics Raises £16.6m to Advance Potent Immunotherapies towards Clinical Trials". Oxford.

	Organisation	Accession Therapeutics Ltd.
	Group	Accession Therapeutics (Group)
	Product	Trocept technology platform
	Product 2	venture capital
	Index term	Accession Therapeutics–SEVERAL: investment, 202211 2nd financing round £16.6m incl iGlobe Partners + Primavera Venture Partners + Birk Venture
	Index term 2	Accession Therapeutics–SEVERAL: investment, 202109 seed financing round £11m incl Primavera Venture Partners + Birk Venture
	Person	Jakobsen, Bent (Accession Therapeutics 202109– CEO before Adaptimmune + Immunocore + Avidex + IMM Oxford)
	Person 2	Chong, Yoke Sin (iGlobe Partners 202211 Managing Partner)

New Singaporean investor iGlobe Partners backs rapidly developing preclinical pipeline at immunotherapy pioneer’s company

Accession Therapeutics, which is developing novel immuno-oncology therapeutics combining high specificity and potency with the ability to counter tumour diversity, has raised £16.6m to advance its two lead preclinical programmes to clinical trials. New investors, including the Singaporean fund iGlobe Partners, join Primavera Venture Partners, Birk Venture and biotech angels in backing the potential of the company’s Trocept platform to deliver highly potent anticancer payloads with minimal toxicity. The CEO and founder of Accession Therapeutics is Bent Jakobsen, PhD FMedSci, a pioneer of T cell receptor therapy for cancer.

The funding will also enable the company to progress its earlier stage pipeline and follows last year’s seed round of £11m. As part of the financing round, Managing Partner of iGlobe Partners Dr Yoke Sin Chong takes a Board observer role.

The Trocept approach uses an adenovirus which has been genetically modified by Professor Alan Parker’s laboratory at Cardiff University to exclusively target cancer cells. Accession Therapeutics believes that this makes it the first company to be able to develop therapeutics with a discriminatory viral point of entry into cancer cells. With the virus carrying a transgene coding for one or more agents (such as antitumour or immune activator drugs or prodrugs), this engineered specificity enables the company to target some of the hardest to treat and most widespread forms of the disease, such as breast, cervical, colorectal, gastric, head and neck, lung, oral, ovarian and pancreatic cancer.

Accession Therapeutics’ two lead programmes are each delivering a different therapeutic payload targeted to cancer cells via integrin binding. They are expected to reach the IND stage at the end of 2023 and enter the clinic at the beginning of 2024.

Bent Jakobsen, PhD FMedSci, CEO of Accession Therapeutics, said, ‘We are delighted to have closed so soon this second fundraising round with the support of new investors, including iGlobe Partners, and our existing investors. With the Trocept platform Accession Therapeutics believes it has the ability to create ideal immunotherapies, specific in target and potent in effect with minimal toxicity. We’re focused on advancing our lead programmes to the clinic as rapidly as possible.’

Managing Partner of iGlobe Partners Dr Yoke Sin Chong, said, ‘iGlobe Partners is delighted to support Accession Therapeutics in its strategy to bring about a step change in the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapies. We look forward to working with the company as it develops an exciting pipeline of drug candidates to induce, attract, activate and target broad and potent immune responses against cancer.’

--ENDS—

For more information, please contact:

Emma Palmer Foster, Communications
comms@accessiontherapeutics.com
Tel +44 (0) 7880 787185

About Accession Therapeutics

Accession Therapeutics is developing novel immune-oncology therapeutics combining high specificity and potency with the ability to counter tumour diversity. Led by T cell receptor therapy pioneer Bent Jakobsen, PhD FMedSci, the company is leveraging its Trocept platform technology to develop a portfolio of next generation products to the IND/early clinical trial stage. By engineering viruses specifically directed to cancer cells and carrying a transgene coding for an antitumour or immune activator drug, Trocept products are expected to be highly specific, broad in action so as to kill all cancer cell variants present in a tumour, and potent in activating the full immune system arsenal. The effects of the antitumour drug and immune system activation caused by cancer cell lysis after viral infection combine synergistically to give this broad and potent response, as illustrated in the animation here: https://bit.ly/3r8WgPu

Dr Jakobsen is a founder of Adaptimmune and Immunocore which are both now listed on NASDAQ. Accession Therapeutics is backed by iGlobe Partners, Primavera Venture Partners, Birk Venture and other international biotech investors. It is based at ARC Oxford in the UK. www.accessiontherapeutics.com

About iGlobe Partners

Founded in 1999, iGlobe Partners is a premier venture capital fund manager investing in early-stage technology startups in the area of Smart Cities, Fintech, Healthtech and Biotech. First established in Silicon Valley and headquartered in Singapore today, the firm has an extensive global network and a strong track record of enabling startups to scale game-changing innovations across geographies. The team has managed funds exceeding US$400 million and has continually delivered top-quartile fund performance to investors, giving rise to multiple unicorns and successful exits including Unity Software (NYSE: U), Twist Bioscience (NASDAQ: TWST), ACSL (TYO: 6232), Matterport (NASDAQ: MTTR), Hippo Holdings (NYSE: HIPO), Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA) and NerdWallet (NASDAQ: NRDS).

About Primavera Venture Partners

Primavera Venture Partners (PVP) is the venture capital arm of Primavera Capital Group, a premier China-based global investment firm with portfolio companies including Alibaba, Ant Group, ByteDance, Junlebao, Kuaishou, Laobaixing, Xpeng, Yum China, among others. PVP focuses on early-stage innovative tech companies in artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, and healthcare etc.

About Birk Venture

Birk Venture is a privately held Norwegian based Investment Company exclusively focusing on the life science sector. The company was founded by Hans Ivar Robinson in 2010. Our vision is to transform unique innovations and technologies into excellent businesses in the health care sector. We offer capital to young companies with significant growth prospects, and we take an active role in the development of our early stage investments. Our approach is always to take a long term view in our strategic investment decisions which are based on broad industrial experience from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry.

Record changed: 2023-07-24