ILiAD Biotechnologies has closed an oversubscribed $115 million series B fundraise to support the company’s next-generation whooping cough vaccine candidate.
Led by RA Capital Management, and with participation from new partners Janus Henderson Investors and BNP Paribas Asset Management, the funds will help ILiAD advance live attenuated intranasal pertussis vaccine BPZE1. The candidate targets adults and adolescents and is designed to be more durable than existing vaccines in the prevention of whooping cough—also known as Bordetella pertussis—infection, disease and transmission.
Joining RA and the new investors are existing backers including a multinational pharmaceutical company and AI Life Sciences, according to a Feb. 10 release.
“BPZE1 represents a compelling opportunity to address the ongoing burden of pertussis,” RA Capital Management’s head of infectious disease Mario Barro, Ph.D., said via release. Six clinical studies have demonstrated the drug’s ability to advance pertussis prevention, and the oral treatment makes it more accessible, according to Barro.
After being developed at the Institut Pasteur de Lille in France, clinical data have shown BPZE1 to block B. pertussis from spreading to adult and adolescent nasal passages and indirectly protect children and infants by preventing transmission to others. The Florida-based biotech says future development of the drug will target children and infants directly.
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In 2024, a phase 2b trial called Super (Stand Up to Pertussis) met its primary goal when administered to 366 healthy school-age children. The trial aimed to measure the vaccine’s ability to be co-administered as part of the DTaP childhood vaccine, and the immunological response and safety of a single dose of the nasal vaccine met the trial goals.
“This immunity and potential ability to prevent transmission may one day protect not only school-age children around the world, but also their vulnerable contacts, particularly infants,” ILiAD CEO Keith Rubin, M.D., said in a statement at the time.
Pertussis can be a life-threatening disease caused by highly contagious respiratory bacteria, causing about 200,000 pediatric deaths each year.
Whooping cough is part of the recommended DTaP childhood vaccine, but decreased vaccination rates in the U.S. have cause pertussis to surge in recent years, with 6,600 domestic cases in 2025 representing a 25-fold increase in cases from 2023.
The surge of cases in the U.S. and Europe has put whooping cough back in the news and the development pipelines of Big Pharma, and, in December, regulators in the U.S. and Europe approved Roche’s first point-of-care test for whooping cough. Designed for use in clinics and emergency rooms, the test can provide results in 15 minutes through Roche’s PCR testing system.
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Florida-based ILiAD, which was named a Fierce 15 winner in 2024, launched when it licensed BPZE1 from Pasteur in 2012. In 2022, ILiAD closed a $42.8 million funding round, which brought the total to $100 million raised to advance the asset. Along the way, the candidate has undergone four human clinical studies and received a fast-track designation from the FDA.
The $115 million series B raise brings ILiAD’s total money raised to $215 million. Ruben told Fierce Biotech in 2024 that ILiAD’s innovation is increasingly necessary and relatively cheap to make and distribute. “There’s more than 7 billion people on Earth, and not a single one is properly vaccinated against Bordetella pertussis,” he said at the time.
