London healthcare firm pledges nearly £50m to 'vital' retina therapy technology

Syncona Ltd has funded £48m of a £50.4m Series B deal to Gyroscope Therapeutics with the extra £2.4m from Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC).

Healthcare company Syncona focuses on founding, building and funding global businesses in life sciences, and retains an 80 per cent stake in Gyroscope.

Its holding is valued at cost and held at £56m, following the investment of the first tranche of the Series B financing of £22m.

Chris Hollowood, chief investment officer of Syncona and chairman of Gyroscope, said: “This financing further demonstrates our strategy to scale companies we have founded ambitiously so they can become global leaders in their domain.

“Gyroscope is an important part of Syncona’s gene therapy strategy as we seek to utilise our expertise in the area to move beyond rare diseases into more prevalent diseases and build the next generation of products.”

Gyroscope is a clinical-stage, retinal gene therapy company, aiming to target the treatment of dry age-related macular degeneration (dry-AMD) - a cause of blindness and for which there is currently no therapy.

The Series B financing brings Gyroscope’s total funding to date to £82m. It is expected to allow the company to complete its phase 1/2 study, commence its phase 2 study and expand the use of its surgical delivery platform in the clinic to deliver consistent retina gene therapy.

Khurem Farooq, Gyroscope’s chief executive officer, concluded: “We are grateful for the confidence Syncona and CIC have shown in Gyroscope as we continue to deliver on our promise to bring gene therapy beyond rare disease to help the millions of people worldwide with dry-AMD.

“Both our investigational therapy GT005 and the Orbit Surgical Delivery System are being used to treat patients in early-stage clinical trials and this funding will allow us to collect and analyse safety data needed to then move into larger trials and eventually bring them to market.”

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