Seattle vaccine startup Curevo, which is developing a vaccine against shingles, raised $26M. The funding comes on the heels of $60M raised in February to advance the company’s clinical trial for its shot against shingles, a painful condition caused by reactivation of the virus that causes chicken pox.
The startup aims to develop a shingles vaccine with a better safety profile and equivalent effectiveness to the leading vaccine on the market. It’s taking on pharma giant GSK, which pulled in $2.3B in sales last year for Shingrix, its shingles vaccine approved in 2017.