Biotech startup Alchemab Therapeutics extends its Series A round with a £25 million investment from the British Business Bank

Clinical-stage biotech Alchemab Therapeutics has extended its series A financing with a £25 million (USD $34m) investment from the British Business Bank – the Bank’s largest investment in a life sciences company to date. The funding will enable the company to build its clinical pipeline and grow its proprietary unique antibody dataset to more than a billion sequences.

Alchemab is discovering and developing first-in-class drugs from its unique Resiliome™ platform which uses complex AI derived algorithms to identify naturally occurring antibodies present in humans with unusual resistance to a range of hard-to-treat diseases.

This investment builds on the success of the company’s first asset, ATLX-1282 – a first-in-class antibody therapeutic in clinical development for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) which was licensed to Eli Lilly and has provided robust validation of the potential of the Resiliome™ platform approach.

The additional funding brings Alchemab’s total Series A investment to date to £109 million and will enable the company to enhance its antibody database from 500 million to a billion antibody sequences and advance additional clinical candidates into development

Dr Jane Osbourn, CEO and Co-Founder of Alchemab, said “We are delighted that British Business Bank has recognised the importance of enabling Alchemab to grow and thrive here in the UK. This investment provides further validation of the sustainable, long-term potential of our drug discovery platform and will enable us to further accelerate our pipeline of first-in-class antibody therapeutics for conditions with significant unmet need.”

Dame Kate Bingham, Managing Partner at SV Health Investors and Chair of Alchemab’s board of directors, said, “The UK life sciences sector has the expertise, creativity and commercial potential to build globally significant biotech companies, and Alchemab is determined to be one of them. This investment by the British Business Bank demonstrates the importance of providing capital to allow innovative biotechs to scale here, and we are proud to be building the company’s future in the UK.”

Charlotte Lawrence, Managing Director of Direct Equity at British Business Bank said, “Alchemab sits at the cutting edge of UK scientific capability, integrating deep sequencing and lab-based validation to harness the body’s natural defences against disease. This landmark £25m investment demonstrates our commitment to providing the long-term capital necessary for the UK’s most innovative biotech firms to advance complex pipelines in the UK.”

Dr Carmine Circelli, Senior Investment Director, Life Sciences at British Business Bank said, “Alchemab is yet another example of the UK’s strength in leveraging technology in life sciences. By combining one of the world’s largest proprietary antibody datasets with advanced AI, the company has developed a powerful platform with the potential to unlock new treatments. Our investment will help convert promising results into high value medical discoveries.”