Cambridge, UK-based Crescendo Biologics Limited said it gathered £17.5 million or $28 million in its Series A round. Imperial Innovations led the financing, which was also participated by new investor Astellas Venture Management. A significant contribution was also provided by Sofinnova Partners, the company's founding seed investor.

Through its novel transgenic platform, Crescendo Biologics aims to discover and develop the best-in-class fully human VH antibody fragment therapeutics. It is working to enable the major VH product formats for its own inflammation and oncology-focused pipeline. Imperial Innovations builds and invests in pioneering technologies that address worldwide problems in the energy, engineering and healthcare space. The corporate venture capital arm of Japan-based Astellas Pharma Inc, Astellas Venture Management aims to find a venture firm with a proprietary technology and foster its growth by using the experience and network of Astellas in the field of biotechnology.

In a statement, Crescendo said it will use the proceeds of the round to further its in-house development programs focusing on inflammation and oncology. The programs will use the VH fragment discovery platform that focuses on Crescendo Mouse.  

Crescendo said V_H domains are the smallest and strongest antibody fragments. Because of this, they hold benefits as far as tissue and tumour penetration, topical delivery, engineering of multivalent products and simple manufacture are concerned. The company's Crescendo Mouse product is able to generate human VH that has superior properties for the development of drugs by using the advantages of "in vivo" maturation.

Crescendo Chief Executive Officer Mike Romanos said in the statement, "The Crescendo Mouse now achieves the same benefits for VH antibody fragments, that is fully human sequence with excellent potency and druggability. These properties enable us to properly address key industry needs, such as plug and play engineering of fully-human multivalent products, and robust topical biologics. This new investment will allow us to accelerate our inflammation and oncology programmes to the clinic and to provide a powerful platform for strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies."