CAMBRIDGE, England, January 9, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Kymab receives $9m grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund infectious disease research and development  

Kymab Group Limited ("Kymab"), a leading monoclonal antibody biopharmaceutical group, announced today that it has received a $9m grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to accelerate the development of novel vaccines and therapeutics for infectious diseases, including HIV.

The Gates Foundation will provide the $9m research and development grant funding over the next three years to enable Kymab to strengthen its work to develop treatments and vaccines for infectious disease using its Kymouse™ antibody platform.

The Gates Foundation will have the rights to develop and distribute these products to low-income countries and Kymab will retain rights to commercialise the products in developed countries. This funding builds on Kymab's established work, allowing the parties to further collaborate in the future.

Dr. David Chiswell, CEO of Kymab, said: "We are delighted that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has extended our collaboration. We have built a strong infectious disease programme under Professor Paul Kellam, our Vice-President of Vaccines & Infectious Disease, and we share the foundation's aims to tackle diseases that have significant impact in some of the world's poorest countries. We look forward to continuing to use our ability to produce human antibodies using our Kymouse™ technology to support and accelerate vaccine and therapeutic antibody development for global diseases."

Professor Allan Bradley, Chief Technology Officer of Kymab, said: "It was always clear to me that the Kymouse™ was a valuable tool in the fight against infectious disease and this was also recognized very early by the Gates Foundation. Over the last two years we have worked with the Foundation to realise this ambition and their increased support is a fantastic recognition of Kymab's continuing effort in testing vaccine candidates for infectious disease prevention and developing therapeutic antibodies for treatment."

The extension of the collaboration with the Gates Foundation follows publication in Science on 8 September, 2016 of new findings which demonstrated that Kymouse™ is an effective platform for discovering and testing novel vaccines and therapeutics for infectious diseases including HIV ^[1].

Kymab has been working with the Gates Foundation and its partners since 2014 on programmes in diseases such as malaria, HIV, and Typhoid; together, these diseases result in more than one million deaths each year. In addition to the new investment in Kymab's research, the Foundation has also invested $30m in Kymab's Series B and Series C financing, which supported development of the Kymouse™ platform.

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References 

^[1]Sok D, Briney B, Jardine JJ, Kulp DW et al. Priming HIV-1 broadly neutralizing antibody precursors in human Ig loci transgenic mice. Science  30 Sep 2016: Vol. 353, Issue 6307, pp. 1557-1560

For further information contact:  

Kymab:
David Chiswell, Chief Executive Officer
Anne Hyland, Chief Financial Officer
Tel: +44 (0)1223 833 301, Email: anne.hyland@kymab.com

Don Powell
don@donpowellassociates.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1223 515436
Mob: +44 (0)778 6858220

Hume Brophy:
Conor Griffin, Alexia Faure, Alex Protsenko
Tel: +44 (0)207 862 6481, Email: kymab@humebrophy.com

Notes to Editors

About Kymab
Kymab Group Limited ("Kymab") is a leading biopharmaceutical group focused on the discovery and development of fully human monoclonal antibody drugs using its proprietary Kymouse™ antibody platform.

Kymab has raised over US$220m of equity financing which includes $100m Series C financing. It has an experienced management team with a successful track record in drug discovery and development and has numerous therapeutic antibody programmes in immuno-oncology, auto-immunity, haematology, infectious disease and other areas.

About Kymouse™
Kymouse™ is a transgenic human antibody platform to discover and develop fully human monoclonal antibody drugs. Work published in Nature Biotechnology demonstrate that the Kymouse™ technology yields an antibody library constituted from 100 trillion different antibodies. From this deep library, rare high-quality antibodies can be selected and developed into therapeutics. Kymouse™ has been designed to maximise the diversity of human antibodies produced in response to immunisation with antigens. Selecting from a broad diversity of fully human antibodies assures the highest probability of finding that rare drug candidate with best-in-class characteristics. The Kymouse™ naturally matures these molecules to highly potent drugs obviating the need for further time-consuming modifications. Kymab is using the platform for its internal drug discovery programmes and in partnership with pharmaceutical companies.

For more information please see http://www.kymab.com

Kymab and Kymouse are trademarks of Kymab Limited.

SOURCE Kymab Group Limited