A Durham company developing vaccines using nanotechnology developed by renowned chemist Joseph DeSimone will announce today that it has attracted a $10 million investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Liquidia Technologies is testing a flu vaccine that uses tiny, engineered particles to deliver the medicine in patients. The company hopes to develop vaccines for other diseases, including malaria.
It's one of many promising drug-development companies in the Triangle, and attracting the attention of the Gates foundation will help raise its profile. Founded in 2004, Liquidia raised $25 million last year from venture-capital and corporate investors.
"As the field of vaccines continues to grow, success will be defined by our ability to produce and deliver highly efficacious therapies in quantities and costs that will support the global demand," said Liquidia CEO Neal Fowler in a statement.
Liquidia employs about 50 people.
The company's backers are betting on the prospects of the nanotechnology developed by DeSimone, a professor at UNC Chapel Hill and N.C. State University. DeSimone won the 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lemelson Prize, known as "the Oscar for inventors," and another prestigious award in 2009 from the National Institutes of Health.
The Gates foundation, started by the Microsoft co-founder and his wife, a Duke University alumna, has given nearly $24 billion in grants since 1994.
In October 2009, the Seattle-based foundation committed $400 million to investments in promising companies that "directly and meaningfully contribute to" its charitable purposes.
"Funding innovation is a key to addressing the unmet health needs of the world's poorest people," said Doug Holtzman, deputy director of the foundation's infectious diseases team, in a statement. "This unique investment partnership will help us advance vaccine development as part of our commitment to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world's poorest countries."
