UCL spin-out Achilles Therapeutics raises $175.5m to develop new immunotherapies

UCL spin-out Achilles Therapeutics, a biotech company that develops new immunotherapies that target the improved treatment of tumours without harming healthy tissue, has successfully raised $175.5m (£127.2m) through its initial public offering. Achilles is a spinout formed in 2016 by Cancer Research UK's Commercial Partnerships team alongside Syncona, with the support of UCL Business, the commercialisation arm of UCL and a part of UCL Innovation & Enterprise, and The Francis Crick Institute. The successful close of Achilles' Nasdaq IPO continues UCL's leading track record of supporting spinout companies to this investment stage. In addition to Achilles, it has seen four other biotech spinouts achieve public listings since June 2018 which have raised a total of over £1.5bn in external investment. An IPO is the process of tendering shares in a company to raise capital from public investors. Achilles' therapeutic approach is to target clonal tumour neoantigens. These are unique flags to the immune system present on the surface of every cancer cell, which were first discovered by the ground-breaking research of Cancer Research researchers supported by the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre at UCLH and UCL.