Nightstar Ltd increases funding to £17 million

10th February 2015

Nightstar, which was spun out in 2014 raising £12 million from Syncona, the venture arm of the Wellcome Trust, has received additional finance from its key investors to advance the company’s clinical choroideremia programme.

Nightstar’s lead programme is a retinal gene therapy for choroideremia, a rare inherited cause of blindness that affects around 1 in 50,000 people.

Nightstar Ltd has also announced the appointment of David Fellows as Chief Executive Officer. Mr Fellows was previously Vice President of Johnson & Johnson’s Vision Care Franchise where he led the global marketing, new product, and licensing activities across the business. Prior to that he was employed for 25 years at Allergan.

Nightstar Ltd Funding

Dr Chris Hollowood, Chairman of Nightstar Ltd and a partner of Syncona, said: “We are delighted to announce the increased funding from Syncona and to welcome David Fellows as Chief Executive Officer. Over the past twelve months, we have laid the foundations of a successful retinal gene therapy company and believe that the additional financing, coupled with David’s proven leadership in ophthalmology, will be invaluable as we grow our pipeline and expedite our choroideremia programme on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Read the Nighstar announcement

Read £12 million investment for Oxford University Innovation spin-out Nightstar

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