Opal Therapeutics raises $6m in series A funding

Privately-held immunotherapy developer Opal Therapeutics has raised US$6 million in series A financing to develop therapeutic vaccines for HIV and hepatitis C (HCV).

Opal raised the funds from an international syndicate, which included Alloy Ventures, Alta Partners and Uniseed, and was led by Melbourne's GBS Venture Partners.

"It's always an effort to syndicate but in this case we had quite a lot of interest," said GBS Venture Partners' Josh Funder.

Developing proprietary technology from the University of Melbourne, Opal is incorporated in Delaware with preclinical operations in Australia and California.

Opal uses short peptides taken from the target virus which are mixed ex vivo (outside the body) with blood. The peptide-coated cells are then injected back into the body where they stimulate an immune response, largely a CD4 and CD8 cellular response. "The process takes a maximum of 60 minutes," said Funder.

Cellular immunity has an important role in the progression of both HIV and HCV.

"Opal's new products have the potential to achieve what other therapies generally fail to do -- generate significant cellular immunity and control viremia," said Opal's founding scientist Dr Stephen Kent in a statement.

The series A funding will be used to extend the company's intellectual property, hire staff and manufacture preclinical materials. It will also be used to support preclinical safety and efficacy studies and phase I human clinical trials in HIV.

"We would hope to commence clinical trials in around 12 months and proceed from there. We think it will be a relatively rapid clinical path," said Funder.