Clinical-stage biotech Alchemab Therapeutics has extended its series A financing with a £25 million (USD $34 million) investment from the British Business Bank – the Bank’s largest investment in a life sciences company to date. The funding will enable the company to build its clinical pipeline and grow its unique proprietary antibody dataset to more than a billion sequences.
Alchemab is discovering and developing first-in-class drugs through its Resiliome™ platform, which uses complex AI derived algorithms to identify naturally occurring antibodies present in humans with unusual resilience to a range of hard-to-treat diseases.
This investment builds on the success of the company’s first asset, ATLX-1282 – a first-in-class antibody therapeutic in clinical development for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) which was licensed to Eli Lilly and has provided robust validation of the potential of the Resiliome approach.
The additional funding brings Alchemab’s total Series A investment to date to £109 million. It will enable the company to enhance its antibody database from 500 million to a billion antibody sequences and advance additional candidates into clinical development.
Dr Jane Osbourn, CEO and Co-Founder of Alchemab, said, “We are delighted that British Business Bank has recognised the importance of enabling Alchemab to grow and thrive here in the UK. This investment provides further validation of the sustainable, long-term potential of our drug discovery platform and will enable us to further accelerate our pipeline of first-in-class antibody therapeutics for conditions with significant unmet need.”
Dame Kate Bingham, Managing Partner at SV Health Investors and Chair of Alchemab’s board of directors, said, “The UK life sciences sector has the expertise, creativity and commercial potential to build globally significant biotech companies, and Alchemab is determined to be one of them. This investment by the British Business Bank demonstrates the importance of providing capital to allow innovative biotechs to scale here, and we are proud to be building the company’s future in the UK.”
Charlotte Lawrence, Managing Director of Direct Equity at British Business Bank said, “Alchemab sits at the cutting edge of UK scientific capability, integrating deep sequencing and lab-based validation to harness the body’s natural defences against disease. This landmark £25m investment demonstrates our commitment to providing the long-term capital necessary for the UK’s most innovative biotech firms to advance complex pipelines in the UK.”
Dr Carmine Circelli, Senior Investment Director, Life Sciences at British Business Bank said, “Alchemab is yet another example of the UK’s strength in leveraging technology in life sciences. By combining one of the world’s largest proprietary antibody datasets with advanced AI, the company has developed a powerful platform with the potential to unlock new treatments. Our investment will help convert promising results into high value medical discoveries.”
About Alchemab Therapeutics
Founded in 2019, Alchemab is a clinical-stage biotechnology company uncovering protective antibodies from disease-resilient individuals to discover and develop novel therapeutics. The company’s Resiliome™ platform integrates the world’s largest fully human antibody database derived from disease-resilient individuals with advanced AI and lab validation to identify and characterise the antibodies that protect them. By pioneering this approach, Alchemab has generated a broad pipeline of first- and best-in-class assets for hard-to-treat diseases. Alchemab’s current investors include SV Health Investors and the Dementia Discovery Fund, RA Capital, DCVC Bio, Eli Lilly, Lightstone Ventures, Ono Venture Investment, and Camford Partners.
Find out more at alchemab.com.
About British Business Bank
The British Business Bank is the UK government’s economic development bank. Established in November 2014, its mission is to drive economic growth by helping smaller businesses get the finance they need to start, scale and stay in the UK. In doing so, we help capture the economic value of innovation for the UK and create jobs and prosperity for people across the country.
The British Business Bank’s core programmes support £23bn of finance to almost 64,000 smaller businesses. (Figures as at end March 2025, does not include Start Up Loans.)
British Business Bank plc is a public limited company registered in England and Wales, registration number 08616013, registered office at Steel City House, West Street, Sheffield, S1 2GQ. It is a development bank wholly owned by HM Government. British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. With the exception of BBB Investment Services Limited they are not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority or the Financial Conduct Authority. BBB Investment Services Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. A complete legal structure chart for the group can be found at british-business-bank.co.uk.
The above investment is operated by British Patient Capital Limited, a wholly owned commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank plc. British Patient Capital Limited is registered in England and Wales with company number 11271076, and registered office at Steel City House, West Street, Sheffield, S1 2GQ. British Patient Capital makes commitments and invests on its own behalf and on behalf of third-party investors whose investments British Patient Capital manages.
The transaction described above does not constitute or imply any endorsement, warranty or recommendation by the UK government, the British Business Bank plc, its subsidiaries or any other party in respect of Alchemab Therapeutics or its products or services.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260708239990/en/
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