Amsterdam-based Leyden Laboratories, a company that aims to protect against a broad range of viruses, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $140M (approx €124.17M) in its Series B round of funding.
In March 2021, the company had raised €40M in its Series A round. With the current round, the company has now raised a total of approx $200M in funding.
The round was led by Casdin Capital and GV (formerly Google Ventures), who also invested in the company’s Series A round. Additionally, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Invus, and Bluebird Ventures, as well as existing investors F-Prime Capital and Byers Capital/Brook Byers also participated in the round.
With this development, Eli Casdin of Casdin Capital will join Leyden Labs’ Board as a member, while Vali Barsan of Softbank Investment Advisers, Jeff Bird of Bluebird Ventures, and Suzanne Jung Angell of Casdin Capital will join the board as observers.
Capital utilisation
The company claims the funds will help support the development of Leyden Labs’ platform, product portfolio, and its team.
Koenraad Wiedhaup, a founder and CEO of Leyden Labs, says, “This fundraising underscores our investors’ belief that Leyden Labs’ platform can generate cornerstone products to combat respiratory diseases. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic teaches us we need to expand our arsenal of tools to fight the current and future viral outbreaks. We are very excited to be working with this team of renowned infectious disease scientists and biotechnology leaders to accelerate advancing our platform and product candidates.”
“Protecting now from what comes next”
The Covid-19 pandemic caught everyone by surprise as people around the world are still suffering and losing the ability to live their normal lives. Scientists are still actively looking for ways to control and contain viruses, however, they are insufficient, especially as viruses evolve into new variants.
Similarly, the possibility of future outbreaks remains high given the numerous types of viruses that may be hidden in nature. This is where Leyden Labs looks to make a difference.
Founded in 2020 by Jaap Goudsmit, Koenraad Wiedhaup and Ronald Brus, Leyden Labs utilises its platform to target commonalities of viral families to protect against many viruses simultaneously as opposed to vaccines that typically protect against a specific virus variant.
The company’s platform is built on two concepts: broad protection against known viruses, new variants and newly emerging viruses, and protection at the gate, i.e. in the mucosa (e.g. in the nose and throat).
According to the company, its intranasal product candidates (e.g. nasal sprays) will be self-administrable, providing people with the freedom to protect themselves instantaneously from infection and prevent transmission.
Besides, Leyden Labs has a pipeline of mucosal protection products, including PanFlu, which uses CR9114, the only human monoclonal influenza antibody that protects against influenza A and B, in-licensed from Janssen Pharmaceuticals.
Leyden Labs’ team
The company claims to have built an energetic team of ‘world-renowned’ biotechnology veterans and fresh talents with decades of experience in research, development, manufacturing, and product launches in infectious diseases.
Industry veterans from Crucell and Leyden Labs’ founders Jaap Goudsmit (CSO) and Ronald Brus (CBO), and Dinko Valerio (Chair of Supervisory Board) are teaming up with executives and scientific leaders from biotech powerhouses like VIR, Harvard, and MIT.
Recently, Suha Jhaveri joined as CCO and Head of Business Development (BD). Jhaveri has held multiple product development, BD, and strategic roles at Genentech, Chiron, and most recently, at VIR, where she launched sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody treatment against COVID-19.
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