mRNA therapeutics company Innovac Therapeutics recently announced the completion of an $18 million Series Pre-A financing. The funding round includes Elikon Venture, Vision Plus Capital, Yunion Healthcare Ventures, TG Sino-Dragon Fund, and other industry and private individuals. And the proceeds will be used to develop further its technology platform and manufacturing capability to advance its lead programs to the clinical stage.
Upon closing its Series Pre-A financing, Innovac also announced the appointments of David Bernstein, MD, Shan Lu, MD, PhD, and Elaine Mardis, PhD, to its scientific advisory board (SAB). And three newly joined SAB members will bring exceptional scientific expertise and profound industry experience to Innovac.
— David Bernstein, MD, Director of the Gamble Program at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, its Vaccine Testing and Evaluation Unit, and Professor at the University of Cincinnati Department of Pediatrics.
— Shan Lu, MD, PhD, Director of the Laboratory of Nucleic Acid Vaccines at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Professor Emeritus at the UMass Chan Medical School.
— Elaine Mardis, Ph.D., Director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, and a key participant in developing the Cancer Genome Atlas. She was the AACR president for 2019-2020.
KEY QUOTES:
“We are thrilled with the great support from our investors. This financing is an important milestone for Innovac and accelerated development of novel mRNA vaccines.”
“Our mRNA technology platform has strong potential to address the huge unmet medical needs in both oncology and infectious disease. With this funding, we will take a significant step forward in bringing our lead programs into clinical stage”
— Michael Zhang, MD, Co-Founder and CEO of Innovac, who has more than ten years of experience in equity investment and venture formation in healthcare industry in both U.S. and China
“An exciting revolution is underway in the vaccine industry, fueled by the dramatic success of mRNA vaccines in response to the SARS-CoV2 pandemic and breakthrough status for a mRNA-based personalized cancer vaccine.”
“Innovac was founded to be a primary driver of this ongoing revolution and will exploit the power of mRNA vaccines to treat and prevent a wide variety of infectious diseases and cancer.”
“We are honored to have David Bernstein, MD, Shan Lu, MD, PhD, and Elaine Mardis, PhD, to join as SAB of Innovac Therapeutics. Innovac will work closely with our renowned SAB members to leverage their breadth and depth of expertise in different areas to further strengthen the scientific foundation of our technology platform and pipeline expansion.”
— Nicholas Valiante, PhD, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), who served as CSO at Caperna, a Moderna venture, and previously Global Head of Immunology and Immunotherapy at Novartis Vaccines
“From the beginning, our mission has been to harness the power of mRNA technology to develop therapies for patients with unmet needs.”
“With this new infusion of capital, we are well-equipped to expand our team, enhance our technology platforms, and build our manufacturing capability to bring our transformative ideas closer to reality.”
— Hang Yuan, PhD, Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer (CTO); Dr. Yuan has more than 15 years of experience in the Chemistry Manufacturing and Control (CMC) development and commercialization of biotherapeutics.
