Kymab receives $9m R+D grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will provide the $9m research and development grant funding over the next three years to enable Kymab to strengthen its work to develop treatments and vaccines for infectious disease using its Kymouse antibody platform.

Distributing medicine in low-income countries

The Gates Foundation will have the rights to develop and distribute these products to low-income countries and Kymab will retain rights to commercialise the products in developed countries. This funding builds on Kymab’s established work, allowing the parties to further collaborate in the future.

Infectious disease programme 

Dr David Chiswell, CEO of Kymab, said, “We are delighted that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has extended our collaboration. We have built a strong infectious disease programme under Professor Paul Kellam, our Vice-President of Vaccines & Infectious Disease, and we share the foundation’s aims to tackle diseases that have significant impact in some of the world’s poorest countries.”

Kymouse antibody platform

Professor Allan Bradley, Chief Technology Officer of Kymab, said, “It was always clear to me that the Kymouse was a valuable tool in the fight against infectious disease and this was also recognised very early by the Gates Foundation. Over the last two years we have worked with the Foundation to realise this ambition and their increased support is a fantastic recognition of Kymab’s continuing effort in testing vaccine candidates for infectious disease prevention and developing therapeutic antibodies for treatment.”

Kymab has been working with the Gates Foundation and its partners since 2014 on programmes in diseases such as malaria, HIV, and Typhoid; together, these diseases result in more than one million deaths each year.

Further funding

In addition to the new investment in Kymab’s research, the Foundation has also invested $30m in Kymab’s Series B and Series C financing, which supported development of the Kymouse platform.