PureTech Health plc (LON:PRTC), a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company dedicated to discovering, developing and commercialising highly differentiated medicines for devastating diseases, has noted that its Founded Entity, Vedanta Biosciences, today announced positive topline data from two Phase 1 studies in healthy volunteers of VE202, the company’s orally-administered live biotherapeutic product (LBP) candidate for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The studies showed that VE202 was generally safe and well-tolerated at all doses and demonstrated durable and dose-dependent colonisation. Vedanta expects to begin a Phase 2 study in IBD patients in the next 12 months. The trial was conducted by Janssen Research & Development, LLC; a more complete study dataset and analyses will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. Vedanta has regained full rights to the IBD programme and will owe Janssen single-digit royalty payments on net sales of a commercialised product.
Vedanta also announced the receipt of $12 million in additional capital and R&D collaboration funds from new and existing investors, including JSR Corporation, bringing the total Series C/C-2 funding to $71.1 million. Participants in the total Series C round included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bristol Myers Squibb, Rock Springs Capital, JSR Corporation, Shumway Capital, Health for Life (Seventure Partners), QUAD Investment Management, SV Investment Corp., Shinhan Investment-Private Equity, Shinhan Capital-Yeollim Partners, Partners Investment Co., Ltd, FC Capital, SymBiosis LLC, and founder PureTech.
Bharatt Chowira, JD, PhD, PureTech’s president and chief of business and strategy, said:
“Vedanta has built an impressive body of evidence that its live biotherapeutic product candidates are safe, well-tolerated and able to modulate the human microbiome in a highly targeted and durable fashion, opening the door for an exciting and entirely novel class of therapeutics. These trial results and the additional Series C funding from leading investors are important milestones for Vedanta and we look forward to the launch of the Phase 2 trial in IBD patients and other advances across the breadth of Vedanta’s pipeline of compelling programmes.”
