First to See the Light

Firm Funded by ST Acquired by Circle

Crowdfunding Firm Funded by Spencer Trask & Co. Acquired by Circle

GREENWICH, Conn., PRNewswire/ — SeedInvest, the equity crowdfunding firm funded by Spencer Trask & Co., was acquired by global peer-to-peer payments technology company Circle Internet Financial Ltd. (Circle). Spencer Trask affiliates were major investors in the Series A round for SeedInvest.

“The SeedInvest team has done a great job in expanding its business of helping new ventures grow,” said Kevin Kimberlin, Chairman of Spencer Trask & Co.

Headquartered in New York City, SeedInvest screens and vets young ventures for a large group of investors. Its network of more than 240,000 investors have funded of more than 220 new ventures. The firm was ranked as the fourth fastest-growing financial services company by Inc. Magazine for its 2018 Inc. 500 list.

Boston-based Circle operates a global social payment and next-generation blockchain platform that facilitates billions in trades with an automated order and settlement process. Valued at $2.8 billion, Circle is owned by Goldman Sachs, Bitmain (bit mining leader backed by Sequoia) and Baidu (China’s primary search engine and one of the largest AI companies in the world) and others.

“With Circle’s reach and relationships, SeedInvest can extend its capabilities to the development private security markets using tokens, virtual currencies and blockchain technology,” Kimberlin stated. “As a new stakeholder in Circle, we look forward to benefiting from this powerful global alliance.”

About SeedInvest

SeedInvest is a leading equity crowdfunding platform, opening up access to venture capital and angel investing to everyone.

About Circle

Circle is a global crypto finance company on a mission to make it possible for anyone, anywhere to help change the global economy. Circle believes money should be like the internet — open, secure, free, everywhere.

About Spencer Trask & Co

Spencer Trask & Co. is a privately held advanced technology development firm, helping entrepreneurs, CEOs and corporate partners start and grow high impact ventures. The firm has been instrumental in launching pioneers in artificial intelligence, genomics, healthcare technology, mobile technology, the Internet and open innovation. Please visit www.spencertraskco.com for more information.

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The Immune Response Corporation

Revolution in Immunotherapy

DISCOVERY – Non-infectious viral vaccines.

INNOVATOR – In the history of medicine, few figures have had as profound an impact on human health and wellbeing as Dr. Jonas Salk. His polio vaccine breakthrough was the culmination of centuries of research, dating back to Louis Pasteur discovering inoculation. However, Salk’s method was different. He found a way to protect people from viruses without giving them the very disease the vaccine was designed to prevent.

Using this no-infection method, Salk worked with Kevin Kimberlin of Spencer Trask to develop cancer vaccines and an immunotherapeutic to slow or prevent AIDS. They patented and conducted preclinical studies on a cancer vaccine that demonstrated a startling 90% protection against lethal malignancies. 

IMPACT – A fusion of dendritic cells and the cancer antigen, their technology formed the basis for the first FDA-approved cell-based immunotherapy. Over 40,000 men with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer have received the treatment, and it appears especially effective for African-American men who receive a 48% improved survival benefit compared to white men.

The team and facility making this immunotherapy also made clinical and commercial supplies of the first approved gene therapy, the CAT-T drug Kymriah.

The first approved cell-base immunotherapy and gene therapy prompted the FDA Commissioner to say, “New technologies such as gene and cell therapies hold out the potential to transform medicine and create an inflection point in our ability to treat and even cure many intractable illnesses.”

The noninfectious vaccine approach developed by Jonas Salk eliminated polio from the developed countries, his flu vaccine mitigated the effects of influenza for the past 75 years, and finally, the cancer vaccine developed at his Immune Response Corporation led the way to gene, cell-based, and immune therapy innovations that will impact human health for generations. In summary, Salk released the last step in enabling the most important preventative medicine – non-infectious viral vaccination.