BioWorld Today Correspondent

Start-up vaccine developer Hookipa Biotech GmbH closed a $9.6 million Series A round to further develop its Vaxwave platform, which the company is touting as a new approach to vaccine development.

Although based in land-locked Austria, Hookipa is named after the Hawaiian beach that is a magnet for windsurfers. The Vienna-based company aims to ride the next wave of vaccine innovation, but for now, it is keeping details of its technology – and of its surf-loving scientific founders – under wraps.

"The platform is using a natural vehicle – it's a sort of natural virus," CEO Katherine Cohen, formerly senior vice president for corporate and business development at Vienna-based Intercell AG, told BioWorld Today. "It comes from a leading laboratory."

The platform is differentiated on the basis of the type of immune response it elicits. Studies in various animal models have demonstrated that it stimulates both a humoral or antibody response and a CD8+ cytotoxic T-cell response.

"We're testing it in different models – it always gives us both," Cohen said. Further information will be forthcoming several months from now.

Paris-based Sofinnova Partners, which also seeded the company, led the Series A round. Forbion Capital Partners, of Naarden, the Netherlands, also participated in the latter transaction.

Hookipa will use the cash to complete preclinical testing in additional animal models, to perform toxicology testing and to begin process development work to optimize manufacturing. "We're hoping the €7 million will see us through a two-and-a-half-, three-year time frame," Cohen said. It has not yet set a timetable for moving into clinical development.

The platform can be used to generate vaccines against viruses, bacteria or cancers. "Because of the accumulated data we have in hand, it has potential to go in many different directions," Cohen said.

The company plans to focus initially on persistent viral infections, such as herpes simplex virus, Epstein-Barr virus and HIV.

"We can also go beyond that to RSV [respiratory syncytial virus]," she added.

Raising the cash was – as ever – difficult. "For a long time, biotech, especially in Europe, has not really delivered the success investors have wanted to see," Cohen said. Although the company's technology did receive "a very good response," it was also a little immature. "Most VCs want to invest in a company with some clinical data or a [complete] package of preclinical data – we're not there yet," she said.

Sofinnova was sufficiently convinced, however.

"This is well characterized for such an early stage company," Sofinnova partner Graziano Seghezzi told BioWorld Today. "I think this is the best genetic [vaccine] platform I've seen out there."

Moreover, viral pathogens remain a significant public health problem. "If you look at the major commercially successful vaccines to date, most of them have been against bacteria, HPV [human papilloma virus] being the exception," he said. "If you crack the nut, you'll have a lot of value in the company for yourself."

Despite the current gloom in venture capital investing in biotechnology, Sofinnova remains committed to the model that it has followed for around 40 years, Seghezzi said. Seven or eight out of every 10 life sciences investments it makes are in start-up or spinout companies. The fund prefers to become active in investees from the start and to take a large stake.

"We have shied away from the new trend of late-stage investing or asset investing," he said.

The model continues to work for Sofinnova.

"The profitability, as an asset class, has suffered in the last 10 years," Seghezzi said. "At Sofinnova, we're not complaining."