Kairos Biotech Ltd announced today that they have received follow on funding of €1m from Dutch entity EchiumBio Holding BV. EchiumBio received 38.1% share of a fully diluted equity pool of the company.
Kairos Biotech management comprises CEO & founder, Dr Mike Bunce, R&D director Ben Passey, Senior Scientist Hayley Hogan and investor director Dr Wietse Mulder.
Kairos Biotech’s development laboratory operates from Wrexham University’s OpTIC Technology Centre in St Asaph, North Wales.
The transaction was executed with legal support from Herke van Hulst and Angela Saldanha at Osborne & Clarke in Amsterdam and Catherine Williams from Keystone Law in London.
The follow-on investment came after the company achieved significant milestones in developing its novel molecules for transplant diagnostics and applications in targeted immunotherapy.
Our approach in transplantation
Successful kidney and other solid organ transplants need to avoid immunological rejection to succeed. Unfortunately, many patients have pre-formed anti-donor T and B cells that restrict the opportunities for transplant. Some patients may wait years for a transplant opportunity due to deleterious anti-donor immunological responses.
Kairos Biotech aims to improve transplant success by developing small molecules that are suitable for both improving diagnostics, and molecularly enhanced to modulate or remove immunological anti-donor responses. We will demonstrate that these ‘designer immunosuppressive molecules’ can interfere and remove the anti-donor responses in a highly-specific and possibly permanent way. This transplant tolerance is expected to be highly beneficial for the transplant of highly sensitized patients. This will enable shorter waiting times for transplant, and potentially improved transplant survival.
About Kairos Biotech
Kairos Biotech is an early-stage company founded by serial biotech start-up entrepreneurs. The company’s focus is on proprietary small molecule discovery applied to diagnostics and immunotherapy. Our initial focus is on improving transplant outcomes by removing immunological barriers to transplantation.
The founder Dr Mike Bunce is a transplant immunologist that has worked for 20 years in NHS transplant laboratory and 23 years in developing molecular and immunological in vitro diagnostic products for transplant companies.
Ben Passey, R&D Director, has 20 years’ experience working mostly within transplant diagnostics companies in UK and Sweden focusing on applied genotyping and software solutions.
Hayley Hogan is an experienced molecular biology scientist and joined Kairos Biotech last year as Senior Scientist after 20 years working within the biotech and transplant industries in USA and Australia.
About EchiumBio Holding B.V.
EchiumBio is the private holding of Wietse Mulder PhD, which entity also has been the majority founding shareholder of Genome Diagnostics BV (GenDx), Genome Products (GenDx Products) and GenDX Products inc. In October 2022, the later companies have been acquired by the French company Eurobio Scientific S.A.
Kairos Biotech Ltd
OpTIC Technology Centre
Ffordd William Morgan
St Asaph Business Park
St Asaph
Denbighshire
LL17 0JD
United Kingdom
Contact Kairos Biotech Ltd
Dr Mike Bunce, CEO
Mike.Bunce@KairosBiotech.com
+44 (0)7549823564
EchiumBio Holding BV
Wietse Mulder PhD, Managing Partner
w.mulder@echiumbio.com
+31 6 51265864
