Austria-based VALANX Biotech, a synthetic biology company, announced that it has secured €2.3M in a growth round of funding.
In 2020, VALANX secured a six-figure seed investment from a syndicate including IST cube, tecnet equity, and SOSV.
The company has now raised additional growth financing comprising equity and public funding. SkyGene from Lower Austria led the current round. Existing investors Xista Science Ventures (formerly IST cube), tecnet equity and SOSV also participated in this round.
Ingo Nagler of SkyGene says, “We see a rapidly growing need for a simple but highly precise technology platform for protein conjugation and the development of new click chemistry for the delivery of complex biotherapeutics.”
“VALANX efforts, enabled by the innovative use of a patented synthetic amino acid as well as modern CRISPR strategies, and first successes of the proprietary Interleukin-2 conjugate, were the key reasons for our investment.”
Capital utilisation
VALANX says it will use the funds to develop its protein conjugation platform, expected to have wide applications in drug development, diagnostics, and biosensor technology.
Michael Lukesch, founder of VALANX says, “Since our foundation in 2017, we have been working on a technology that will help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to produce protein drugs faster and more reliably.”
“Our process allows protein conjugates to be precisely defined in terms of their molecular composition, which offers a significant advantage in terms of both production and drug safety.”
“Now we want to expand our team, further develop our revolutionary protein conjugation technology and intensify our contacts with industrial partners,” adds Lukesch.
“Superpowering proteins”
VALANX Biotech was founded in 2017 as a spin-off of the Graz University of Technology with IP borne out of the doctoral studies of its founder, Michael Lukesch.
VALANX is a pharmaceutical company based in Klosterneuburg, Austria, specialising in the precise production of protein-drug conjugates.
The company focuses on researching and developing protein expression systems that allow the incorporation of synthetic amino acids at customisable positions in proteins.
Using click chemistry, VALANX combines modified proteins with other molecular units. This approach from synthetic biology provides solutions to challenges in drug development, offering new possibilities for the pharmaceutical industry and beyond.
Source : Silicon Canals