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Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all your money invested. This is a high risk investment. You could lose all the money you invest and are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more

Investing in Therapeutics and Biotech Innovation
Dec 31 2020

Knowledge intensive investments focus primarily on innovation. The UK is perfectly placed to build on its high quality academic and scientific foundations to generate start-up companies with fantastic scientific ideas that will be developed into high value assets.

o2h ventures have been privileged to be able to invest in a number of these fledgling businesses.

Innovations come in many guises. Our focus has been in therapeutics, machine learning/artificial intelligence (ML/AI) and to a lesser extent digital technologies/therapeutics.

Here we take a brief look at some of the investments our flagship human health EIS fund has invested in over the last 18 months:

Oxford Drug Design (ODD) is a company whose foundation was built on the pioneering work of Professor Graham Richards at Oxford University. In the coming years antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is going to be a potential threat to society, ODD has reacted and used its proprietary computational capabilities to filter large databases of virtual chemicals to select new start points for a key antibacterial project. They have rapidly improved the original chemical start points they found and subsequently been awarded up to $11M in grant funding of which a significant proportion comes from CARB-X, highlighting the value others have seen in their approach.

Exonate are spun out from the universities of Bristol and Nottingham, exploiting world leading biological research into alternative splicing. Through the support of o2h’s discovery group, the Exonate team were rapidly able to develop a clinical candidate for wet Age Related Macular Degeneration, a disease that impacts the vision of a large proportion of the elderly population. Although treatments exist, these require frequent injections directly into the eye. Exonate’s approach will be a less invasive eye drop and the fundamental biological hypothesis should provide a stronger pharmacological response. This resulted with them doing a deal with J&J at the start of this year and their candidate has recently started clinical trials.

SomaServe was founded based on innovation from UCL in the area of formulations. We originally invested into the company with a strategy to develop the technology as a service to support research. However, the company has pivoted their strategy as Abcam were able to use their own sales and marketing infrastructure to support this purpose, allowing the team to start collaborations looking into the therapeutic application of the technology, demonstrating innovation at a business as well as scientific level.

The COVID pandemic has impacted everyone and our portfolio companies have responded accordingly. Working closely with the o2h group our portfolio companies have been working on COVID-19 applications of their technology.

AIVIVO, a ML/AI start up quickly evaluated all available drugs in its database and used their proprietary platform to share the drugs it felt could potentially be used to help anyone struck down by the virus.    

Increasingly this year we have seen an increase in the number of high quality Biotech opportunities. Cortirio is developing portable brain imaging which can be used at the scene of an injury to reduce time-to-treatment and save lives. Traumatic brain injury treatment, which kills 1m and leaves 7.5m disabled per annum. Fast treatment vital for head injuries, but 40% not recognised within 12 hours.

As we approach 2021 we have some exciting opportunities to complete lead investments into and are looking forward to supporting British innovation.

 

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o2h-ventures
more articles by Kirsty Greenwood
  • o2h-ventures Biotech investing… the UK is attracting attention 19 Feb 2021
  • o2h-ventures Biotech and digital therapeutics…a great opportunity 13 Jan 2021
  • o2h-ventures Investing in Therapeutics and Biotech Innovation 31 Dec 2020
o2h-ventures
The o2h team are leaders in the biotech community and have been actively involved as investors, holding various board/industry positions as well as being engaged in grassroots scientific activity for over 20 years.
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o2h ventures Limited is regulated and authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 812245). Capital at risk, only suitable for high net worth and sophisticated investors

Risk Information

Due to the potential for losses, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) considers this investment to be high risk

What are the key risks?

1 – You could lose all the money you invest

• If the business you invest in fails, you are likely to lose 100% of the money you invest. Most start-up businesses fail.

2 – You are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong

• Protection from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), in relation to claims against failed regulated firms, does not cover poor investment performance. Try the FSCS investment protection checker here. (https://www.fscs.org.uk/check/investment-protection-checker)

• Protection from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) does not cover poor investment performance. If you have a complaint against an FCA-regulated firm, FOS may be able to consider it. Learn more about FOS protection here. (https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers)

3 – You won’t get your money back quickly

• Even if the business you invest in is successful, it may take several years to get your money back. You are unlikely to be able to sell your investment early.

• The most likely way to get your money back is if the business is bought by another business or lists its shares on an exchange such as the London Stock Exchange. These events are not common.

• If you are investing in a start-up business, you should not expect to get your money back through dividends. Start-up businesses rarely pay these.

4 – Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

• Putting all your money into a single business or type of investment for example, is risky. Spreading your money across different investments makes you less dependent on any one to do well.

• A good rule of thumb is not to invest more than 10% of your money in high-risk investments (https://www.fca.org.uk/investsmart/5-questions-ask-you-invest)

5 – The value of your investment can be reduced

• The percentage of the business that you own will decrease if the business issues more shares. This could mean that the value of your investment reduces, depending on how much the business grows. Most start-up businesses issue multiple rounds of shares.

• These new shares could have addition rights that your shares don’t have, such as the right to receive a fixed dividend, which could further reduce your chances of getting a return on your investment.

If you are interested in learning more about how to protect yourself, visit the FCA’s website here (https://www.fca.org.uk/investsmart)