Posted: 20 June 2024
Professor Mimi Tang, Scientific Founder and CEO, Prota Therapeutics has spent almost three decades working in allergy immunology. For much of that time, she was unsatisfied with the common approach – avoid the allergen and turn to the EpiPen in an emergency. But, after an initial trial in 2015 showed hope for the possibility of ‘curing’ peanut allergies, Tang left her job as a senior physician to work as a start-up founder.
Prota Therapeutics was spun out of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in 2016 and began working towards developing an oral immunotherapy solution for children with food allergies. Tang is in the top 1% of highly cited researchers in the field of immunology and was recently the recipient of the Distinguished Leadership Award at BioMelbourne Network Women in Leadership Awards for her work on peanut allergies.
It was announced earlier this year that in a series A1 round, Prota Therapeutics had successfully raised $31.6 million from investors led by SPRIM Global Investments (SGI). The capital raised in this round will go towards commercialising the product – although that could take years. Managing Partner and Co-founder at SGI, Michael Shleifer, says: “We chose Prota Therapeutics first and foremost because of Professor Tang’s very focused, clinical-driven approach that yielded a remarkable efficacy profile for Prota’s treatment.”
