San Diego’s PaxVax Developing Oral Tablet Vaccine, Looks to Raise More Cash With Support of Seattle’s Ignition Capital

PaxVax, a San Diego startup backed by Seattle’s Ignition Capital, has raised $2 million of a planned $6 million investment round, according to a document filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The biotech was founded in early 2007 to develop new oral vaccine technology based on a common cold virus called the adenovirus. The company says its vaccine, which is administered as oral tablets, avoids much of the requirements that conventional vaccines require—including cold storage for the vaccine itself and inoculation by qualified medical personnel. PaxVax says its oral tablets can be stored and distributed at room temperature, and are self-administered.

PaxVax says its vaccines also can be produced in large quantities and at record speed and low expense compared with traditional vaccines derived from egg culture. The company also says an oral vaccine may yield a more robust immune response than traditional vaccines.

The biotech was co-founded by Ken Kelley, who has worked in biotechnology for more than 25 years, including such companies as IntraBiotics Pharmaceuticals of Palo Alto, CA, and Integrated Genetics (acquired by Genzyme), and with such venture capital firms as K2 BioVentures and Latterell Venture Partners, according to the PaxVax website.

PaxVax’s board includes Ignition Capital operating partner Rennie Coit, who represents the Seattle VC firm at PaxVax. A pediatrician who got his medical degree at UC San Diego, Coit previously worked as a strategic planning consultant to clients that included academic medical centers, health insurance proviers, medical research organizations and global health providers. He also served as the chief operating officer of the University of Washington Medicine Neighborhood Clinics.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.