Sofinnova, Forbion lead €20m round for Hookipa

Ellie Pullen
05 November 2013

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A consortium of investors led by Sofinnova Partners and Forbion Capital Partners has invested €20m in a series-B funding round for Austria-based Hookipa Biotech.

Co-leads Sofinnova and Forbion are existing investors in the company. They were joined in the series-B round by new investors Takeda Ventures, Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund and BioMedPartners.

Hookipa will use the fresh funding to push its HB101 product into phase-I clinical testing. The company will also use the capital to further industrialise its viral vector platform Vaxwave, with the aim of creating partnerships and developing a pipeline of products catered towards the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases.

Previous funding
In October 2011, Sofinnova and Forbion injected €7m into Hookipa in the company's series-A round. Sofinnova invested via its €260m Sofinnova Capital VI fund, according to unquote" data.

Company
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Vienna, Hookipa develops prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines for the treatment of infectious diseases and cancer. It does so using its Vaxwave technology, which is a vaccine platform that uses a replication-defective viral vector.

The company's HB101 product is a vaccine designed to treat cytomegalovirus (CMV), which is part of the herpes family of viruses. The product is currently in advanced pre-clinical development and testing.

Hookipa claims its Vaxwave technology could potentially be a treatment for cancer immunotherapy, due to the technology's vectors having the ability to be repeatedly administered to stimulate cytotoxic T cell (CD8+ T cell) responses against tumour targets. CD8+ T cells are a type of white blood cell that kills both cancer cells and cells that are infected with a virus.

People
Katherine Cohen is the founder and CEO of Hookipa. Sofinnova partner Graziano Seghezzi is the chairman of Hookipa's supervisory board. Forbion general partner Sander van Deventer also sits on the board.

Following the closing of Hookipa's series-B funding round, Boehringer vice president Frank Kalkbrenner has joined the company's supervisory board. Takeda senior investment director Yuji Iizawa and BioMedPartners general partner Markus Hosang have taken up the roles of observers for the company.