Vaccine startup nets $45 million in funding despite wider skepticism
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Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios
Not too long ago, mRNA vaccines were viewed as one of the country's most significant biotech breakthroughs. Safe, effective, and well-funded.
- Today, they're viewed with skepticism — if not outright fear — by many Americans, including HHS chief RFK Jr.
So it seems like an unlikely time to raise $45 million in venture capital funding for an mRNA vax startup, let alone one working on a universal flu vaccine. But that's just what Silicon Valley-based Centivax did yesterday, led by Steve Jurvetson's Future Ventures.
Centivax is the second startup from Jake Glanville, who many may recall as the curly-haired guy featured on Netflix's "Pandemic" documentary series — filmed before COVID but airing right as it exploded.
- His first was an antibody developer called Distributed Bio, which sold to Charles River Labs in 2021 but let Glanville keep the underlying tech.
- Centivax initially raised some seed capital from NFX and Global Health Investment Fund, plus non-dilutive funding from The Gates Foundation, U.S. Army and U.S. Navy.
- It's already begun manufacturing, done a variety of animal tests (including on pigs, which get the flu), and on human immune organoids. Phase 1 clinical trials come next, with expectations that they could go quicker than usual given the ubiquity of influenza in both hemispheres.
Glanville acknowledges the fraught political climate, but argues that "it's not as bad as some news articles would lead you to believe."
- He believes that confusing vaccine messaging during the pandemic is partially to blame for mRNA hesitancy. Plus the spate of myocarditis cases for young men, which Glanville attributes to coronavirus' unique "spike" — something he thinks would normally have been engineered out of a vaccine, but wasn't given the time constraints.
- "This FDA already has fast-tracked a couple of mRNA vaccines," Glanville says, adding that both President Trump and FDA chief Marty Makary have said they want a universal flu vaccine.
- "They just put $500 million toward a universal flu shot effort — not ours, but they think mRNA needs more study and we're here to do more study."
Centivax believes that its tech eventually could apply to universal coronavirus, malaria, HIV and herpes viruses that may be linked to Alzheimer's disease.
- But for now it's exclusively focused on universal flu, with a technique that suddenly has a lot less competition.
