Kairos Biotech Ltd have announced that they have received €1m funding of Dutch entity EchiumBio Holding BV. An earlier provided convertible loan was also converted into shares. EchiumBio received 25% share of a fully diluted equity pool of the company.
Kairos Biotech management comprises CEO & founder, Dr Mike Bunce, and R&D director Ben Passey. Wietse Mulder is appointed as non‐executive/investor director of the board.
Kairos Biotech’s development laboratory operates from Wrexham Glyndŵr University’s OpTIC Technology Centre, St Asaph, in 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 Theobald Associates in London. The investment enables the company to accelerate our small molecule discovery program to characterize candidate molecules for pre and post‐transplants diagnostic tools and therapeutic agents directed at improving transplant success.
Their 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 ‘highly sensitised’ patients may wait years for a transplant opportunity due to 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 antidonor 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 focusing 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 22 years in developing molecular and immunological in vitro diagnostic products for transplant companies. Mike has also founded / co‐founded two other ongoing biotech startups since 2008.
Ben Passey is a commercial molecular biology scientist and joins Kairos Biotech as R&D Director after 20 years working mostly within transplant in vitro diagnostics companies. Ben has previously co-founded a successful ongoing biotech company.
About EchiumBio Holding B.V.
EchiumBio is the private holding of Wietse Mulder, 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.
Wietse Mulder (1962) has ample experiences in both scientific research as well in the commercialisation of both products and custom research services.
In 1989 he obtained his master degree in Molecular Biology at the University of Utrecht. He is knowledgeable about a diverse set of genetic (screening) tests as obtained during his PhD period (1994) at the University of Amsterdam and a post‐doc position at the University of Wageningen.
In 1995 he started as sales account manager at a Dutch distributor of major suppliers for molecular biology and diagnostics. Here he gained expert status on application‐driven sales of both products and custom services for molecular bioresearch.
In 2004, he started – as part of Dutch Biopartner™ entrepreneurial program – the initiative of Genome Diagnostics BV, which was founded at 1st of March, 2005.
In 2007, Wietse started the company GenDx Products and began to distribute products of other suppliers within the Benelux that are active in the transplant field.
In 2013, GenDX products Inc was founded, currently located in Chicago, IL, that distributes within the USA. Wietse was one of the key initiators of the new chimerism product line and was winner of the 2013 fall edition of the Dutch Venture Challenge.
Wietse’s entrepreneurial spirit together with his infectious enthusiasm and drive have proven to be a good mixture for undertaking new initiatives. He loves to share his experiences and is frequently asked to lecture about entrepreneurship in life sciences.
