Immunomics firm reels in $14m to advance drug discovery
ImmunoScape, a biotech firm whose offerings include an immunomics-based technology platform designed to provide novel insights into the human immune system, has sealed up a $14m USD fundraising round. The infusion of investor cash brings the company’s total funding over the course of the past year to $25m USD.
According to the company, the money will be used to increase the size of the staff at its Singapore headquarters, continue expansion into the US, and scale up its planned San Diego, California, laboratory. Additionally, it will work on advancing its Deep Immunomics platform, which reportedly enables characterization of a patient’s immunome at ultra-high resolutions.
Chief business officer Geoff Nosrati told Outsourcing-Pharma ImmunoScape offers an edge over companies offering similar products, thanks to the depth and scale of data possible with the platform.
“With our molecular barcoding techniques, we're able to characterize immune cells at extremely high resolution,” Nosrati explained. “For example, this allows us to simultaneously analyze hundreds of T cell specificities and dozens of phenotypic markers on a single cell basis using our TargetScape technology, and we can do this at the scale of tens of millions of cells per sample."
Choon Peng Ng, ImmunoScape CEO, said, “Since our last funding announcement less than a year ago, we have made significant strides in our collaborations with organizations such the NIAID and Johns Hopkins, with whom we published multiple COVID-19 studies, one of which was recently spotlighted by the NIH. We also established a Scientific Advisory Board chaired by our co-founder, Evan Newell, and grown our US presence with experienced scientists and biotech executives, like Geoff Nosrati, as our chief business officer.”
Nosrati added that the funding demonstrates significant confidence in ImmunoScape and its technology, as well as the company’s commitment to continued growth.
“We are quite busy right now, not just with ongoing collaborations, but also with hiring and training new team members to continue the company's expansion; even during the pandemic, we've managed to open our San Diego lab and build out the team there,” Nosrati told OSP. “We have big plans for ImmunoScape that involve not just building on our current set of pharma and biotech partnerships, but also investing aggressively in technology development as well as other areas where the Deep Immunomics platform can create value, such as drug discovery.”
