Vancouver’s ABOzymes has completed a substantially upsized seed financing.
Built upon the discoveries of Dr. Peter Rahfeld and Professor Stephen G. Withers of UBC’s Michael Smith Laboratories, ABOzymes was named one of 10 homegrown startups to watch in 2021 by Techcouver.
In emergency situations when there isn’t time to cross-match a patient’s blood type, doctors have to use universal donor blood to save their life. Unfortunately, this blood type (type-O) is always in short supply. ABOzymes Biomedical‘s technology makes all blood O-type, so any blood can be used for any patient, regardless of their blood type.
This funding builds upon a pre-seed financing completed in February 2021 and non-dilutive funding from the Canadian Glycomics Network, Genome British Columbia, NRC-IRAP and MITACS. The company’s research and development activities are also supported by $5 million in grant funding from the US Air Force to its academic collaborators at UBC.
The funds will be used to further develop its ground-breaking proprietary platform that enables a world where a patient’s blood type is no longer the first constraint when they need life-saving organ transplants or blood transfusions.
“Every doctor has been taught that blood types are considered absolute — ABOzymes has challenged this fundamental dogma of medicine. Once proven, our technology will increase donor organ matching opportunities and the supply of universal donor blood, which will ultimately help save lives,” said John Coleman, PhD, President and CEO of ABOzymes.
“This latest capital raise is an important milestone for ABOzymes, allowing us to expand the impact of our platform across a number of use cases, hire more technical staff, and continue to progress our preclinical program to achieve our mission to improve and save lives in ways previously deemed impossible. We appreciate the strong investor interest in this recent financing.”
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