Selecta Biosciences, Inc., a clinical stage biotechnology company developing a novel class of targeted antigen-specific immune therapies, today announced it has secured equity funding of more than $20 million from new and all of Selecta's existing investors.

'With strong financial support from both our current and new investors, we are now well positioned to rapidly advance our immune tolerance pipeline, including the lead program SEL-212, the first non-immunogenic treatment for refractory and tophaceous gout,' said Werner Cautreels, PhD, President and CEO at Selecta. 'Severe gout is a highly debilitating disease and just one of the potential therapeutic applications of our proprietary Synthetic Vaccine Particle (SVP) platform. With a well established development path and favorable pro forma economics, SEL-212 is a great opportunity. SEL-212 is just the beginning for us, as we have identified many biopharmaceuticals, including existing and new classes of biologics such as gene therapy, where the effects of anti-drug antibodies are deleterious.'

Selecta has established strong R&D and manufacturing expertise to enable the company to readily adapt its proprietary SVP platform to other applications developed internally or in collaboration with partners. In addition to its lead program for severe gout (SEL-212), Selecta is advancing immune tolerance programs to prevent anti-drug antibodies (ADA) against Factor VIII (SEL-201), anti-TNF alpha antibodies, and vectors used for gene therapy as well as candidates for allergies and auto-immune diseases.

Including the more than $20 million announced today, Selecta has obtained a total of $78.6 Million in private equity funding to date. Selecta is backed by top-tier venture investors, including Polaris Venture Partners, Flagship Ventures, OrbiMed Advisors, NanoDimension, Rusnano, I2BF, Eminent Venture Capital and Leukon Investments.

About Selecta
Selecta Biosciences, Inc. is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel drugs that use immune modulating nanomedicines to generate targeted antigen-specific immune responses to prevent and treat disease. Selecta's proprietary Synthetic Vaccine Particle (SVP) platform creates a novel paradigm in immunotherapeutics and vaccines, enabling completely new applications while offering the potential of improved efficacy and safety profiles.

Selecta's immunomodulatory SVPs can induce antigen-specific immune tolerance, enabling them to be applied in a variety of therapeutic areas with large unmet medical need. The company is focused on three key near-term applications: inhibition of immunogenicity for biologic therapies, treatment of allergies, and treatment of autoimmune diseases. Immumogenicity adversely affects the safety and efficacy profile for many biological therapies, and is known to have caused the termination of a number of promising biological therapies in clinical development. Selecta's SVP is a product engine that has the potential to unlock the full therapeutic value of biologic therapies.

Through proprietary products and collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies and research organizations, Selecta is building a pipeline of product candidates to address unmet medical needs in serious and chronic diseases. Selecta Biosciences, Inc. is based in Watertown, Massachusetts, USA. For more information, please visit www.selectabio.com.