Austrian VALANX Biotech announces fundraise of €2.3M

VALANX Biotech, a synthetic biology company, has announced that it has secured €2.3 million in a growth round of funding for drug development and diagnostics. SkyGene from Lower Austria led the current investment.

• The company was founded by Michael Lukesch and is based in the xista science park in Klosterneuburg. It specializes in the precise production of defined protein-drug conjugates for the pharmaceutical industry. That allows the company’s synthetic amino acids to be incorporated into any protein at freely selectable positions in multiple copies.
• VALANX claims it uses techniques from synthetic biology to offer fresh solutions to a previously intractable problem for customers in the pharmaceutical industry and beyond. This opens new avenues for drug development.

“Since our foundation in 2017, we have been working on a technology that will help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to produce protein drugs faster and more reliably. Our process allows protein conjugates to be precisely defined in terms of their molecular composition, which offers a significant advantage in terms of both production and drug safety.”

Michael Lukesch, founder and CEO of VALANX Biotech, added.

• In spring 2020, the company received a six-figure seed investment. The lead investor this time is SkyGene from Lower Austria. The existing investors xista science ventures (formerly IST cube), tecnet equity, and SOSV have also participated in this financing round.
• VALANX will use the funds to develop its protein conjugation platform, which is expected to have broad applications in drug development, diagnostics, and biosensor technology.