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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

Oxford Drug Design recieves over £8m in grant and equity investment
Jul 9 2019

Oxford Drug Design (ODD) wins major funding awards from CARB-X, the UK Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and an equity investment led by o2h Ventures totaling over £8m to develop new antibiotics effective against drug-resistant superbugs and to expand its proprietary machine learning computational platform.

Oxford, UK, 18th June 2019– Oxford Drug Design Limited, a biotechnology company with a proprietary computational and machine learning platform, announced today that CARB-X (Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Accelerator) has agreed to back their lead in-house discovery project with a milestone dependent, non-dilutive, award for over £5M. In parallel, the project will be further accelerated by an award of £2M from DHSC through their Small Business Research Initiative funding stream. At the same time, o2h Ventures, which launched Britain’s first therapeutics and AI fund earlier this year, led an equity investment into ODD.

The combined funds will be used to advance its Dual-Target aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetase inhibitor (DaaRSi) project, which is developing new antibiotics effective against drug-resistant ‘Superbugs’ and to continue to develop the machine learning platform to tackle other valuable pharmaceutical targets.

Drug-resistant superbugs are on the rise worldwide and represent a threat to global public health and health security.According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 700,000 people die each year worldwide from bacterial infections. In the United States, an estimated 23,000 people die each year from drug-resistant bacterial infections. In Europe, the number of deaths yearly is estimated at 33,000.

Oxford Drug Design CEO, Paul Finn, said “To win these two highly competitive awards is a remarkable success and a tremendous validation of the strength of our science and its potential to deliver a new antibiotic to treat drug resistant bacterial infections. The funding provided by DHSC and CARB-X will significantly accelerate the development of our series of aminoacyl tRNA synthetase inhibitors. We are also delighted to be supported by o2h Ventures, who have been instrumental to the success of the equity funding round. Multiple compound series have been identified with the aid of our innovative cheminformatics and machine learning technologies. These compounds represent new classes of antibiotics with activity against Gram-negative organisms, an area of critical unmet medical need for which the clinical development pipeline is very limited.”

About Oxford Drug Design and its aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetase Programme

Using its proprietary suite of cheminformatics and drug design technologies, including chemistry-informed applications of machine learning, Oxford Drug Design has discovered novel classes of small-molecule synthetase inhibitors with activity against Gram-negative ESKAPE*pathogens. The compounds possess a novel mode of interaction with the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase target. A design strategy of targeting more than one synthetase decreases the probability of resistance emerging to the new compounds compared to aaRS inhibitors pursued in the past. Oxford Drug Design intends to progress these compounds as quickly as possible through hit-to-lead and optimization towards clinical development.

*ESKAPE pathogens are the bacteria identified by WHO as those having the most critical unmet need for novel therapeutics. They include E. coli and K. pneumoniae, organisms responsible for many hard-to-treat infections.

https://www.oxforddrugdesign.com

About CARB-X

CARB-X, led by Boston University, is a global non-profit partnership dedicated to accelerating early development antibacterial R&D to address the rising global threat of drug-resistant bacteria. CARB-X funding is provided by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; the Wellcome Trust, a global charity based in the UK working to improve health globally; Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF); the UK Department of Health and Social Care’s Global Antimicrobial Resistance Innovation Fund (UK GAMRIF); the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and with in-kind support from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. A non-profit partnership, CARB-X is investing more than $500 million from 2016-2021 to support innovative antibiotics and other therapeutics, vaccines and rapid diagnostics. CARB-X supports the world’s largest and most innovative pipeline of preclinical products against drug-resistant infections. CARB-X focuses exclusively on high priority drug-resistant bacteria, especially Gram-negatives. CARB-X is headquartered at Boston University School of Law. https://carb-x.org

About SBRI

The SBRI programme uses the power of government procurement to drive innovation. It provides opportunities for innovative companies to engage with the public sector and gain contracts to solve specific problems. Competitions for new technologies and ideas are run on specific topics and aim to engage a broad range of organisations. SBRI enables the public sector to engage with industry during the early stages of development, supporting projects through the stages of feasibility and prototyping. https://sbri.innovateuk.org

About o2h Ventures

o2h Ventures Limited has launched the o2h Therapeutics and AI fund which is the first S/EIS fund in the UK solely focused on early stage biotech therapeutics and related AI opportunities. The geographic scope shall be UK wide including Oxford and London but will target the growing Cambridge biotech cluster. The Fund is structured to be S/EIS compliant providing tax breaks for UK taxpayers.

The biotech sector is one of the leading sectors in the UK economy. The large pharma companies now rely on the small innovative biotech’s for new ideas in disease areas such as cancer, genomics, anti-ageing and neurosciences amongst others which has led to higher potential exit valuations.

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. o2h operate from their proprietary 2.7 acre Mill SciTech Park where they are developing a unique model for incubating small life science companies.

www.o2h.com/ventures

Media Contacts:

o2h Ventures:

Ajit Singh

ajit@o2h.com

CARB-X:

Jennifer Robinson

carbxpr@bu.edu

Tel: +1.514.914.8974

Oxford Drug Design:

Paul Finn

contactus@oxforddrugdesign.com

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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)