On May 11, 2023 AilseVax reported that it has received £1.5M in seed investment from investors including QUBIS, the commercialisation arm of Queen’s University Belfast; Co-Fund NI and TechStart NI as part of Invest Northern Ireland’s Access to Finance suite of funds; and Sapphire Capital, together with grants from Biomedical Catalyst, InnovateUK and Invest NI (Company Pipeline, AilseVax, MAY 11, 2023, View Source [SID1234631940]). Speaking on the investment, Dr Paul Kerr, CEO at AilseVax, said: "We are very pleased with the support from our investors that will add to our competitively acquired grant funding to advance our mission to develop novel cancer vaccine therapies. With this support we can accelerate our research and bring promising therapies forward into clinical trials and ultimately improve the lives of cancer patients."
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Located in Belfast, AilseVax formed as a spin-out company from Queen’s University Belfast and Trinity College Dublin (TCD), two of the leading research universities on the island of Ireland. The partnership was built on a decade long academic collaboration in the cancer vaccine field and was aided by the Ireland-Northern Ireland-US National Cancer Institute Cancer Consortium formed in 1999 to link knowledge and innovation between the USA, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; this consortium was itself a result of the Good Friday Agreement.
The research at TCD by AilseVax co-founder Professor Ed Lavelle’s group involves therapeutic vaccination against cancer using novel adjuvants to boost cell mediated immune responses. Prof Lavelle commented that "developing improved cancer vaccines relies on innovations in adjuvant discovery and our novel technologies have great potential to enhance the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy." Commenting on the announcement, Professor Dan Longley, Director of Research at the Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research (PGJCCR) at Queen’s University Belfast and co-founder of AilseVax, said: "It is incredibly exciting to be part of AilseVax. The science we are doing in Queen’s and Trinity is at the cutting-edge of cancer vaccine research. The approaches we are developing have the potential to significantly improve outcomes for people with cancer across the globe." Co Fund NI and Techstart NI are part financed by the European Regional Development Fund under the Investment for Growth & Jobs Northern Ireland Programme (2014-2020).