Laverock Therapeutics secures Innovate UK award to advance immune effector cell therapeutics programme using GEiGS® technology

Laverock Therapeutics secures £1m funding via the Innovate UK Investor Partnerships Future Economy programme, supported by UKI2S. 

London, UK, 30th October 2023 / Sciad Newswire / Laverock Therapeutics, developer of a unique gene silencing platform for the creation of programmable advanced therapies, is pleased to announce that it has been awarded £1m in funding, made up of a £700k grant from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, and supported by co-funding from the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund (UKI2S) through the Investor Partnerships Programme. The award will enable Laverock to progress its immune effector cell therapeutic programme aiming to combat hard-to-treat cancers, via use of its gene editing induced gene silencing (GEiGS^®) technology.

The Innovate UK and UKI2S funded project will provide access to patient derived, highly disease relevant experimental tools. This will aid preclinical evaluation and the generation of key data in support of Laverock’s programmable macrophage and T-cell programmes developed using its unique GEiGS technology. This will facilitate informed decision making on the selection of future oncology therapeutic candidates.

Support from Innovate UK and UKI2S will also allow Laverock to strengthen internal capabilities in immune oncology by building an oncology focused team and facilitating collaboration with leading centres of excellence. These collaborations will focus on patients’ needs and enable the development of more targeted therapeutic products for the communities that will benefit.

Tim Allsopp, Chief Technology Officer of Laverock Therapeutics, said, ‘We’re tremendously excited by this achievement and the public-private endorsement of our technology that Innovate co-funding provides. We’d like to thank Innovate UK and UKI2S for their support and look forward to integrating our novel gene silencing GEiGS^® platform into more effective therapeutic designs for the benefit of the global cancer patient community.’

Oliver Sexton, UKI2S Investment Director, added, ‘UKI2S is delighted to invest alongside Innovate UK as a member of the Investor Partnerships scheme. As an investor, Innovate UK’s support for additional programmes provides a powerful tool to accelerate development and de-risk investment. Innovate UK and UKI2S’s equity is helping Laverock add to its pipeline of ground-breaking therapies.’

This award follows the company’s recent expansion of its seed funding round to £13.5m.

ENDS

For further information, please contact:

Laverock Therapeutics
E: contact@laverocktx.com

Sciad Communications, Media Relations 
Juliette Craggs
E: pressteam@sciad.com
T: +44 (0)20 3405 7892 

Notes for Editors

About Laverock Therapeutics 

Laverock Therapeutics is developing a unique gene silencing platform for the creation of programmable advanced therapies. The company was established in 2021 to commercialise the gene editing induced gene silencing (GEiGS) technology for human therapeutic applications. GEiGS provides significant advantages over current approaches allowing generation of products with improved efficacy, safety and accessibility.

About GEiGS^®

GEiGS uses universal gene editing tools to minimally edit non-coding genes and redirect their silencing activity (RNAi) towards a new target gene. GEiGS is strongly differentiated from other gene silencing approaches through its core stable, tunable and programmable attributes, ensuring cell type- or condition-specific activity.

For more information, please visit www.laverocktx.com and follow us on LinkedIn. 

About Innovate UK

Innovate UK drives productivity and economic growth by supporting businesses to develop and realise the potential of new ideas.

We connect businesses to the partners, customers and investors that can help them turn ideas into commercially successful products and services and business growth.

We fund business and research collaborations to accelerate innovation and drive business investment into R&D. Our support is available to businesses across all economic sectors, value chains and UK regions.

Innovate UK is part of UK Research and Innovation. For more information visit www.ukri.org/councils/innovate-uk/.