Инвестиция в 500 тысяч долларов спасла от банкротства биотех Oxford Vacmedix

Oxford Vacmedix UK Limited, a bio-pharmaceutical vaccine firm, in which the University of Oxford has significant shares, will remain afloat after a $500,000 investment from a major shareholder. This comes after an insolvency notice was posted to The Gazette, the official UK Government public record for notices such as those on insolvency or wills and probate. In this post, it was noted that Oxford Vacmedix had conducted a meeting of their creditors and shareholders on 1st September 2026 to discuss  potential liquidation.  Oxford Vacmedix Executive Chairman, Dr Anthony Coombs, told The Oxford Student: “This timely intervention means that Oxford Vacmedix remains solvent and can meet all liabilities as they fall due.” Coombs also noted that the firm has “a number of promising leads for Series B funding.” Series B funding allows a company to scale to new projects, proving their business model after Series A funding.  Oxford Vacmedix UK is an Oxford University spinout specialising in the provision of  what the  company website calls “advanced therapeutic cancer vaccines.” In 2012, the company received their license to develop the Survivin Recombinant Overlapping Peptides (ROP) technology. ROP is an immunotherapy procedure invented by Professor Shisong Jiang, Oxford Vacmedix’s Chief Scientific Officer, and a Senior Industrial Fellow of the Oncology Department of the University’s Medical Sciences Division.  According to their website, the company began development after receiving £12.5 million in Series A investment. This is the funding which allows a company to scale after initial, or seed investment. This allowed the company to begin work on OVM-100 – a cancer vaccine targeting HPV-related cancers  such as cervical, head, and neck. OVM-200 is another form of immunotherapy designed to target tumours in lung, prostate and ovarian tissues.  The OVM-200 ‘vaccine’ works by disabling a specific protein in the cancer cells, known as survivin. In doing so, this returns the cells to the normal controlled death pathway, known as apoptosis – the inhibition of which is characteristic of cancer cells. After beginning Phase 1b trials for the OVM-200 project, the company announced the opening of Series B investment in November 2024 with a lead initial investment of £500,000 from the charity Prostate Cancer Research,  £2 million from their lead investor Dx&Vx and a further £900,000 in grant funding from Innovate UK, the Government’s grant organisation. This investment was planned to take OVM-200 to phase 2 and complete phase 1 of the OVM-100 project. The firm’s financial accounts for the year ending December 31st 2024, published on the Companies House website shows that in 2024, the company owed £429,363 in short-term debt to creditors, down 21% from £546, 899 the year prior.  However, the Director’s Report of the firm’s accounts noted that additional funding for projects would need to be secured beyond a 12-month cash-flow forecast. It acknowledged that there was a “material uncertainty” that might “cast doubt on the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”   Despite this, before the meeting of the creditors on 1st September, a $500,000 investment was received  from the company’s second largest shareholder, recorded as  Jia He Hui Investment, a Chinese venture investment firm, in their 29 November 2025 confirmation statement. In his comment, Coombs noted that Oxford Vacmedix was looking forward to further development after the success of Phase 1 of OVM-200 their “lead cancer immunotherapy” and that the trial showed efficacy in a clinical setting.