AlgoNomics Secures $2 Million in Venture Capital Funding

AlgoNomics NV, the immuno profiling company, announced recently that it raised 1.5 million euro (about 2 million USD) to further accelerate the development of its in vitro screening platform that expands the company’s existing immunogenicity screening services and tools.

The patented Epibase screening tool is currently widely applied for the immunogenicity screening and optimization of biotherapeutics, such as therapeutic antibodies, biosimilars and vaccines.

According to Dr. Lasters, CEO of AlgoNomics, “The fast roll-out of our in vitro immunogenicity screening platform has been the primary objective of the company, and the new funds allow us to increase the research and development of novel, standardized ways of addressing immunogenicity”.

Philippe Stas, COO of AlgoNomics, “The current investment allows us to further build on our dominant market position in immunogenicity screening, and to evaluate new technologies extending our current immunogenicity service offerings.”

The financing round was led by the new investor Baekeland Fund II, and subscribed by the Gemma Frisius Fund and TrustCapital. In addition, VIB, the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, participated as well.

Epibase estimates to what extent a given therapeutic protein may lead to an immune response in patients. The computer-based platform focuses on T-cell epitope identification. The uniqueness of Epibase resides in its capability to identify the T-cell epitopes specific for HLA types covering most of the human population (including Caucasian, Oriental and Afro-American), including the majority of HLA sub-types for which little or no experimental data is available.

All therapeutic proteins show some level of immunogenicity, a side effect where the patient recognizes the drug as a “foreign” substance. This causes the patient’s immune system to mount a defence against the therapeutic drug, resulting in significant reduction of efficacy and a rapid clearance of the drug from the circulation. The process is driven by the presence of T-cell epitopes in the protein – fragments binding to HLA receptors and inducing a T-cell response. There is a growing consensus about the need for early adoption and standardisation of immunogenicity assessments for biologicals.

AlgoNomics is a Belgium based Biotech Company providing structural bioinformatics services to develop rationally designed therapeutics in the broad field of immunotherapy. AlgoNomics owns a rich, proprietary platform for structure-based protein and peptide design. The technology platform contains innovative tools to unravel protein-protein and protein-peptide interactions.
AlgoNomics’ premier product is the Epibase platform for T-cell epitope identification in different population groups, applied in the discovery of vaccines and therapeutic proteins.

For more information, please visit www.algonomics.com