The startup bug has hit the world of biotechnology, and the latest victim is a business that is building a super glue, coincidentally, forbug-combatingvaccines.SpyBiotech a startup spun out of Oxford University that has developed a style to bond antigens toviruses and other particles to makevaccines has announced 4 million ($ 5 million) in funding from GV, the Alphabet/ Google-backed VC, and Oxford Science Innovation, Oxfords own venture money, which also counts GV as a significant backerofits own5 80 million fund.

This is GVs thirteenthinvestment in Europe since first opening for business in June 2014. London-based partner Tom Hulme said that about half of its investments to date in Europe are in biotechnology and life science: for GV overall, life science account for aroundone-third of all investments.

This is a seed round, and SpyBiotech co-founderSumi Biswas said in an interviewthat it will be used to trial SpyBiotechs bonding technology. Farther developings, which could include licensing the technology to other inoculation makers, as well asSpyBiotech developing its own vaccines, will need farther rounds of funding in the future, she added.

In addition to co-founding SpyBiotech, Biswas is an assistant professor at OxfordsJenner Institute, which specializes in researching and developing vaccines( its named after Edward Jenner, the British scientist who developed the worlds firstvaccine, for smallpox ).

The bond that forms the core of what SpyBiotech is aiming to productize was initially discovered at the Jenner Institute.

In the case of SpyBiotech, the Spy in its name comes not from any creepy insinuations about privacy-busting, but from the bacterial behind strep throat, impetigo and other infections, Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria, which is often shortened to Spy.

Biswas and three other colleagues Mark Howarth, Professor of Protein Nanotechnology; Simon Draper, Professor of Vaccinology; and Dr. Jing Jin had noticed that when Spy is divided into a peptide and protein partner( SpyTag and SpyCatcher, respectively ), they are naturally attracted to each other. Isolating what attracts them sorts the core of SpyBiotechs glue that can in turn to contribute to bond other inoculations together.

It plans to use this glue first to bond antigens not to actual pathogens, but to virus-like particles, replacing other techniquesthat have in the past been deemed too imprecise and ineffective.

Spinout doctors

The way that Oxford has tapped into a development at one of its research institutes and is now aiming to turn it into a business is a sign of how things are changing in the U.K. academic world and how VCs like GV( and others like Sequoia, which co-invested with GV in another biotech startup, Cambridge Epigenetix) are helping to gasoline that change.

Scientistsno longer find the published scientific paper as a certainendpoint for their research, and instead of connecting with large pharmaceutical businesses to pick up the ball and continue operating with it, they can now ensure an opportunity for themselves.

Tapping into other kinds of technologies like big data analytics and machine learning, and the funding provided by their universitys venture arms and other VCs keen to find the next big growth area in the world of technology, they can now, in effect, construct out their own commercial laboratories as startups.

We see the Spy technology as the missing link in rapid and robust VLP vaccine design and assure GV as a natural co-investment partner to take this forward, saidLachlan MacKinnon, principal at OSI. We are privileged to be working with four founders who bring such an impressive combining of academic prowess and clinical-stage experience to the company.

Biswas comes from India, and originally had planned to study to be a doctor before deciding to come to Oxford to pursue research. When I came to Oxford, I knew I wanted to go further than academia, and thats what were now doing, Biswas told me today.

SpyBiotechnot acting in isolation. Oxford Science says that the annual rate of companies that are being spun out from university research has doubled to 21 from 10, with seed money up five times in the past year, to 52.6 million from 9.5 million.

GV doesnt have a fixed-size for its fund, and has been in something of a trial-and-error mode since first opening for business in Europe nearly three years ago. Starting out with four partners and one on loan from the U.S ., GV now has two are stationed in London, Hulme and Avid Larizadeh Duggan. Other businesses and entities that are backed by GV in Europe include Secret Escapes, Resolution, LostMyName, Yieldify, Carrick Therapeutics, Currencycloud, Genomics Medicine Ireland, Lemonade and Weaveworks.

SpyBiotech has established a novel approach employing platform VLP vaccine technology that shows promise in a number of addressable marketplaces, Hulme said. Were looking forward to working with a team of world-class scientists with extensive experience in vaccine development spanning from vaccine design through to Phase II clinical trials to develop more effective inoculations for a wide range of global diseases.

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