Syncona portfolio company Beacon Therapeutics raises $170 million in a Series B financing

• Syncona invests in Beacon’s $170 million (£134 million[1]) Series B financing, committing $42.5 million (£33.5 million), alongside a leading global syndicate of new and existing investors
• Syncona’s holding in Beacon written up by £14.1 million (2.2p per share); a 17.6 per cent uplift to the 31 March 2024 valuation of the company
• Including new capital invested, Syncona’s holding value of Beacon will be $131.9 million (£104.0 million), and on drawdown of the full Series B financing, Syncona’s ownership stake in the business will be 41.4 per cent[2]

Syncona Ltd, (“Syncona” or the “Company”) a leading life science investor focused on creating, building and scaling global leaders in life science, today announces that it has committed $42.5 million (£33.5 million) to a $170 million (£134 million) Series B financing of its portfolio company Beacon Therapeutics (“Beacon”), a leading ophthalmic gene therapy company with a purpose to save and restore the vision of patients with blinding retinal diseases. Forbion led the round and, alongside Syncona, the financing was supported by existing investors Oxford Science Enterprises and the University of Oxford, and new investors TCGX and Advent Life Sciences.

Syncona launched Beacon in 2023, cornerstoning a Series A financing. Beacon was created to pursue an opportunity Syncona identified to apply its domain knowledge in retinal disease to a late-stage clinical asset through the acquisition of AGTC[3] in 2022, which it complemented with a pipeline of pre-clinical programmes to build a leading retinal gene therapy company. Beacon is focused on both rare and prevalent diseases, including X-linked retinitis pigmentosa (XLRP), a blinding orphan disease for which there is no available treatment and dry age-related macular degeneration (dAMD), a leading cause of irreversible vision loss in people over 60. Beacon’s lead asset, AGTC-501, is currently in a Phase II/III registrational trial[4] for the treatment of XLRP, which is expected to read out in CY2026. Beacon presented encouraging 12-month efficacy data from the Phase II SKYLINE trial of AGTC-501 during the year, and 24-month data is expected in H2 CY2024.

This latest financing brings the total amount that Beacon has raised in funding to date to approximately $290 million. The funds will be used to support the continued clinical development of AGTC-501 for XLRP and to generate Phase I/II clinical trial data for Beacon’s dAMD programme.

Following the Series B financing, Syncona’s holding in Beacon has been written up by £14.1 million, a 17.6 per cent uplift to the 31 March 2024 valuation of the company. Including £9.6 million of new capital invested since 31 March 2024, Syncona’s holding value of Beacon will be $131.9 million (£104.0 million). In addition, Syncona has an existing £14.4 million of value attributed to a deferred consideration from the prior acquisition of AGTC[5]. On drawdown of the full Series B financing, Syncona’s ownership stake in the business will be 41.4 per cent.

Elisa Petris, Lead Partner at Syncona Investment Management Limited and Board Director of Beacon Therapeutics, said: “Beacon has secured a high-quality syndicate of investors to support the ongoing development of its lead clinical candidate AGTC-501 and broader pipeline. The strength and calibre of this global group of life science investors provides important external validation of Beacon’s technology and progress to date. We have leveraged our expertise and network to support Beacon thus far, from identifying the opportunity to acquire a late-stage asset in AGTC, to supporting this financing today. We look forward to continuing to work closely with the company and our syndicate partners to advance its solutions for debilitating blinding retinal diseases through the clinic and towards patients.”

David Fellows, Chief Executive Officer of Beacon Therapeutics, said: “We are focused on progressing our promising pipeline of ocular gene therapies to save and restore the vision of patients with a range of prevalent and rare retinal diseases that result in blindness. These funds will support the ongoing development of our late-stage and preclinical pipeline and enable acceleration of the development of AGTC-501, as we progress through the clinic and toward commercialisation. We are delighted to extend our strong group of investors and look forward to working with them to ambitiously pursue our strategy.”

^[1] FX rates at 2 July 2024.

^[2] Percentage holding reflects Syncona's ownership stake at the point full current commitments are invested.

[3] Applied Genetic Technologies Corporation.

^[4] The UK’s MHRA and the EU’s EMA have accepted the Phase II/III VISTA study design as being pivotal.

[5] As part of Syncona's acquisition of AGTC, the Company has the potential to benefit from any future commercialisation of Beacon's lead asset AGTC-501 via a "deferred consideration" which provides the right to a mid-single digit percentage of future income from sales and licensing. Milestone value stated at 31 March 2024.