Singapore-based biotech company Immunoscape announced that it has raised $11 million in a global equity financing round led by US-based venture firm Anzu Partners and joined by University of Tokyo Edge Capital (UTEC) in Japan, and NPR Holdings in Indonesia.

The company, which was founded in 2017, said that its immune profiling platform, which provides deep insights into the T-cells of the human immune system, is already intensely engaged in COVID-19 related programs on three continents. It also has established collaborations with several vaccine development companies, including the San Diego-based Arcturus which is running clinical trials in Singapore.

ImmunoScape's technology was based on work begun at Stanford University, and continued at A*STAR of Singapore (a statutory board under the Ministry of Trade and Industry). The company has received support from A*STAR and its commercialization arm A*ccelerate, as well as Enterprise Singapore.

ON THE RECORD

"There is an urgent need to understand how the T-cell immune response contributes to COVID-19 immunity and can be leveraged for vaccine design," said ImmunoScape co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Dr. Alessandra Nardin. 

"In global collaborations with Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Parma (Italy), and Duke-NUS, we are evaluating COVID-19 patients and recovered individuals. We are building a large data set on human T-cell response to COVID-19, in an effort to develop new therapies and better vaccines with our partners."

"As a Singapore-based firm supported by the Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR), our team has deep experience assessing T-cell immune response to dengue, hepatitis B, and other viruses. It was clear that we must provide deep support to COVID-19 vaccine development in this global crisis," said ImmunoScape co-founder and CEO Choon Peng Ng, formerly a senior executive at A*STAR.