Excelimmune receives $1M investment as part of open Series-B financing round

Excelimmune, Inc. announced today they have received a $1 million investment as part of an open Series-B financing round. The investment comes from a mixture of existing and new investors. Proceeds from the financing will be used to continue studies of the company’s first drug candidate, Staphguard, a human recombinant polyclonal antibody (HRPA) against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). In September 2009, Excelimmune was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a HRPA against Clostridium difficile.

“We are very excited to help advance this novel and important new therapeutic candidate to address a large unmet medical need”

“We are moving forward on all of our milestones, including completion of another round of animal studies to advance our first HRPA candidate and continued development of a proprietary, automated HRPA development platform to clone and screen human donor-derived antibodies,” said Quinton Zondervan, CEO of Excelimmune.

Excelimmune has successfully completed a pre-clinical mouse study of Staphguard, its first human HRPA therapeutic for MRSA. MRSA is a potentially fatal bacterial infection that is commonly acquired in a hospital or other healthcare setting. It is believed to infect as many as one million patients annually. In order to advance the development of Staphguard towards an IND filing, Excelimmune is partnering with Clinquest, a Healthcare Product Development Service Organization. “We are very excited to help advance this novel and important new therapeutic candidate to address a large unmet medical need,” said Dr. Cornelis Wortel, CMO of Clinquest. HRPAs have emerged as the third generation of antibody therapeutics, a market that is forecasted to reach $40 billion by 2012.