SutroVax bags $22M Series A to develop vaccines for infectious diseases

SutroVax, the vaccine spinoff from Fierce 15 honoree Sutro Biopharma that is developing vaccines for infectious diseases, announced Thursday the completion of a $22 million Series A financing.

SutroVax CEO Grant Pickering

"The financing was upsized and oversubscribed based on the level of interest of potential new investors," CEO Grant Pickering told FierceVaccines.

SutroVax has several vaccine candidates that have already obtained preclinical proof of concept, Pickering said. The new funding will be used to advance other candidates in the pipeline to this stage.

SutroVax has an exclusive license to Sutro Biopharma's Xpress CF platform to make conjugate vaccines.

"What's unique about this platform is that it's a method of producing proteins in a cell-free environment… The system allows you to make complex proteins very efficiently and very expeditiously," Pickering said.

"We can specifically conjugate the antigen in very precise locations every single time--a fundamental advantage that doesn't exist with current technology and current conjugate vaccines."

Pickering did not disclose which diseases SutroVax is targeting. According to a statement, despite the success of the conjugate vaccine market, there are a number of infectious diseases and bacterial strains that have yet to be targeted using conjugate vaccines.

"(Our) objective is to maximize the value of the Xpress CF platform. The prime emphasis at the moment is to apply that to conjugate vaccines, the largest segment of the vaccine space, and we think there's a great deal of potential," Pickering said.

- here's the release

Special Report: FierceBiotech's 2014 Fierce 15 - Sutro Biopharma