Venture capital activity within the exosome industry has gained substantial momentum in recent years, as more as more investors pursue this promising cell-free therapeutic technology. While funding events slowed in the past year and a half due to the Covid pandemic, funding events from 2016 to 2021 were particularly robust—with companies like Evox Therapeutics, ILIAS Biologics, Codiak BioSciences, ExCoBio, Evox Therapeutics, ArunA Bio, and Capricor Therapeutics leading the charge.
Venture Capital Funding for Exosome Technologies
A description of large exosome funding events from 2016 to present is described below.
On February 18, 2021, the London and Cambridge Life Sciences team advised Evox Therapeutics on its £69.2 million Series C financing round. The financing round was significantly oversubscribed with high demand from both existing and new investors. The Series C financing was led by Redmile Group who was joined by new investors OrbiMed and Invus. Proceeds from this financing will support the advancement of Evox’s exosome-based therapeutics pipeline, including progression of several rare disease assets into the clinic and continued development of its world-leading DeliverEX™ exosome drug platform.
On September 28, 2020, ILIAS Biologics, Inc. completed a Series B financing round of $20.6 million in South Korea. The initial investors from the Series A round, HB Investment, Timefolio Asset Management, and Daedeok Venture Partners joined this round with follow-on investment. The new institutional investors, including Asset One, Devsisters Ventures, Meritz Securities, Kiwoom Securities, Daishin Securities, Hanyang Securities/Yeolim Partners, and Genie Asset Management, joined this round along with a small number of private investors. ILIAS has raised a total of $40.2 million in capital since it was founded in November 2015.
On September 9, 2020, Codiak BioSciences filed with the SEC to raise up to $100 million from an initial public offering (IPO). The company’s lead program, exoSTING, is an exosome therapeutic candidate engineered with its engEx Platform. The company is developing exoSTING for the treatment of multiple solid tumors. Preliminary data of the Phase I/II trial was released in 2021.
On August 25, 2020, South Korea’s ExoCoBio, Inc. raised $9.3 million in its series C and Pre-IPO funding. For this round, SBI Investment Korea and Dt & Investment were joined by newcomers G.N. Tech/ReeHu Investment and Focus Assets Management. Since it was established in 2017, the company has raised a total of $56.3 million.
On March 22, 2019, Evox Therapeutics Ltd. secured £1.5 million in funding from Innovate UK, the UK’s Innovation Agency, through the Biomedical Catalyst Early-Stage Award. The funds are being used to support the Evox’s pre-clinical development of an exosome-based therapy to treat argininosuccinic aciduria (ASA), in collaboration with University College London (UCL).
On July 24, 2019, ArunA Bio, Inc. completed a $13 million common stock financing. Proceeds from the financing are being used to support the continued development of ArunA Bio’s neural exosome delivery platform and pipeline of novel neural exosome therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as ALS, Huntington’s disease, and stroke.
On May 02, 2017, ExoCoBio, Inc. raised a total of $11 million in its Series A funding round, within four months of its establishment. The investment was secured from top tier South Korean venture capital firms such as SBI Investment, Atinum Investment, ID Ventures, and Dt & Investment.
On October 20, 2016, Capricor Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing biological therapies for cardiac and other serious medical conditions, announced it had been awarded a grant of up to $4.2 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study CAP-2003 (cardiosphere-derived cell exosomes) for hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS). Altogether, the company has received more than $30 million from government agencies to support the preclinical and clinical advancement of its cell and exosome candidates.
To learn more about this rapidly expanding market, view the “The Global Exosome Market – Market Size, Forecast, Trials and Trends.”
