Baseimmune

Baseimmune is a London-based biotechnology company that designs antigens — the component of a vaccine that mimics a pathogen — using computational methods rather than conventional experimental selection. Its platform combines large pathogen datasets, high-performance computing and machine learning to generate synthetic antigens that incorporate multiple regions of a pathogen most likely to elicit a protective immune response, including regions predicted to arise from future mutation. The company describes this property as "vaccines with plasticity": a single antigen intended to cover currently circulating strains as well as variants that have not yet emerged. Antigen designs produced by the platform are technology-agnostic and can be inserted into third-party vaccine delivery platforms for laboratory and clinical testing.

Early programmes focused on infectious disease. As of April 2021 the company reported five antigens at various stages of development, including a human infectious disease candidate with Vaccitech, a malaria vaccine programme with Imperial College London, a universal COVID-19 vaccine, and a veterinary vaccine against African swine fever virus. By March 2023 three candidates — for African swine fever, coronavirus and malaria — were described as being in preclinical trials, and the company said its algorithm had correctly predicted major SARS-CoV-2 variants such as Alpha and Delta from limited early sequence data. The company's current positioning is broader than prophylactic vaccines: it presents itself as developing next-generation active immunotherapies, pairing computational design with protein engineering to produce bespoke antigens directed at the complexity of chronic diseases. BASEIMMUNE LTD was incorporated in England on 30 October 2019 and is registered under the SIC code for research and experimental development on biotechnology.

Founding story

Co-founders Ariane Gomes, Joshua Blight and Phillip Kemlo met during Gomes's PhD at the University of Oxford's Jenner Institute, where the group's vaccine development method produced what is described as the fastest vaccine to reach clinical trials in Oxford's history. Blight and Gomes are both PhD and postdoctoral vaccine researchers from the Jenner Institute, while Kemlo is a self-taught computer scientist. Gomes had intended to pursue an academic career but concluded that the potential of machine learning to compress multi-year antigen discovery projects into weeks made a company the fastest route to impact; the team founded Baseimmune to build a machine learning platform for antigen design.

Business model

Baseimmune operates as a research and development-stage biotechnology company built around a proprietary antigen design platform. Antigen designs generated by the platform can be applied to any vaccine delivery technology, and the company has advanced candidates through collaborations with academic and industry partners (Vaccitech, Imperial College London, Oxford University) alongside its own in-house preclinical programmes. Management stated in 2023 that the goal was to partner with a major pharmaceutical company to scale the technology and bring vaccines to market.

Traction

Five antigens were in various stages of development as of April 2021, with three preclinical candidates (African swine fever, coronavirus, malaria) reported in March 2023. The founders had designed more than 15 vaccines prior to establishing the company, two of which reached human clinical trials, including a multi-genotype therapeutic HPV vaccine covering over 85% of circulating cancer-causing HPV types that was licensed to Vaccitech and dosed its first patient in a Phase 1/2a trial on 18 March 2021. Reported funding includes a £685,000 investment announced in April 2021 and a $4.8m seed round closed in October 2021.

Latest developments

The company's website describes its current focus as next-generation active immunotherapies combining computational design with protein engineering to create bespoke antigens for chronic diseases. Its board of directors comprises Joshua Blight and Phillip Kemlo of Baseimmune, Hussein Kanji of Hoxton Ventures, Jamie Macfarlane and Kevin Walton of Creator Fund, and Alex Wilson of IQ Capital. The scientific advisory board includes John Cijiang He, MD and Scott L. Friedman, MD (Mount Sinai), Toby Maher, MD (USC), Paul Noble, MD (formerly Cedars-Sinai) and Joel Rurik, PhD (formerly Karolinska Institutet).