Centivax Closes $37 Million Financing to Accelerate Phase 2 Clinical Development of Universal Flu and Advance Follow-On Portfolio to Clinical Readiness

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Centivax, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company engineering vaccines and therapies for durable, universal protection against highly diverse targets, today announced the closing of a $37 million oversubscribed financing led by Structure Fund, with participation from Meiji Seika Pharma Co., Ltd., Sigmas Group, Kendall Capital Partners, and Patrick and John Collison. Meiji Group holds the No. 1 market share for influenza vaccines in Japan. Patrick Collison is co-founder and CEO of Stripe, Inc.

This financing builds on Centivax's $45 million oversubscribed Series A completed in June 2025, led by Steve Jurvetson of Future Ventures, with participation from BOLD Capital Partners, Kendall Capital Partners, Amplify Partners, Base4 Capital, seed investor Global Health Investment Corporation, and NFX, Centivax's largest shareholder.

"Our June 2025 Series A enabled us to rapidly initiate Phase 1 clinical studies this past February, with nearly all 180 Phase 1a participants already enrolled," said Dr. Jacob Glanville, founder and Chief Executive Officer. "This additional oversubscribed financing reflects the strength of the platform data, the Centivax team's demonstrated ability to execute, and the momentum building around our mission. The new capital creates three timely strategic opportunities for Centivax: first, to advance Centi-Flu 01 seamlessly through the next major value inflection in Phase 2; second, to accelerate multiple follow-on universal immunity programs to clinical readiness; and third, to deploy our scalable manufacturing innovations, empowering Centivax to seize control of the means of production for Centi-Flu 01, current follow-on programs, and every future Centivax universal immunity program to emerge from the platform."

Conventional seasonal influenza vaccines are reformulated twice each year in an effort to minimize mismatch between vaccine and circulating strains. Even so, the match is never perfect, and seasonal influenza vaccine effectiveness remains variable, ranging from 10–60% year to year, entirely ineffective against influenza pandemics, of which there have been five in the last century. Centi-Flu 01, by contrast, is designed to focus antibody and cellular immune responses on conserved regions of the influenza virus shared across strains and subtypes that are highly resistant to mutation. By targeting these regions, Centi-Flu 01 is intended to provide broad, reliable, and durable immunity against both seasonal and pandemic influenza without annual reformulation. The ongoing Phase 1 study, which includes more than 300 subjects and reads out in 2026, is designed to assess safety but also efficacy by gold standard correlate-of-protection against a comprehensive panel of 24 influenza virus strains, including guidance strains, pandemic strains, mismatch year strains, and the current circulating strains.

Phase 2, enabled by the current financing and scheduled to begin in early 2027, represents the next major inflection point for the Centi-Flu program, the epitope-focusing platform, and the company. The 500-subject Phase 2 trial is designed to evaluate statistically robust universal breadth, superiority of protective titers against mismatch strains and current circulating strains relative to current commercially available seasonal influenza vaccines, and non-inferiority of protective titers against guidance strains. This financing positions Centivax to move seamlessly from Phase 1 through completion of Phase 2 without fundraising-related delays.

Beyond Centi-Flu 01, this financing advances four follow-on clinical candidates from the universal immunity platform to manufacturing and clinical readiness. These immune-focusing programs include a broad cancer therapy, a malaria vaccine, a universal antivenom recently published in Cell, and a broad Alzheimer's preventative inspired by Centivax Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jerald Sadoff's prior work on shingles vaccines, with recent studies recently demonstrating that his shingles vaccine resulted in reduction in Alzheimer's Disease and neurodegeneration. Advancing these programs to manufacturing and clinical readiness positions Centivax to pursue multiple blockbuster indications of significant unmet medical need, while further validating the breadth and generalizability of the platform across diverse disease areas.

Finally, the financing will support deployment of Centivax's scalable, cell-free manufacturing process into GMP in 2026. This process innovation is expected to support Phase 2 clinical trial material for Centi-Flu, Phase 3 consistency lots, and GMP manufacturing for follow-on programs. By implementing this technology stack in GMP, Centivax aims to reduce the time, cost, and technical risk of advancing follow-on candidates into the clinic and toward commercialization, while supporting a faster path to global access for Centi-Flu.

Collectively, these milestones are expected to strengthen downstream partnering and development optionality.

"Centivax's repeated ability to secure oversubscribed financing underscores both the strength of the programs and our leadership in a market where many bioscience companies have been forced to slow, consolidate, or pause amid a constrained funding environment," said Stephanie Wisner, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of Centivax. "A rapid Phase 2 start strengthens our business development position by freeing us to move through the next set of value-driving milestones without delay. It also reduces the operational constraints associated with aligning clinical studies to flu season, enabling us to advance according to clinical readiness rather than the calendar."

About Centivax
Centivax is a universal immunity company, deploying proprietary computational immune-engineering platforms to create vaccines and therapies that deliver universal protection against entire classes of diverse targets. Its lead clinical influenza candidate—featured in The New Yorker, the Netflix docuseries Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak, and other outlets—addresses a global flu market exceeding $7 billion, with follow-on programs spanning Alzheimer's disease, oncology, malaria and a universal antivenom. This growing portfolio highlights the platform's potential not only across a broad range of infectious diseases—including viral, bacterial, protozoan, fungal, parasitic, and bioterror-related threats—but also in reducing long-term health consequences that infections can contribute to, including neurodegenerative disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and autoimmune conditions. Centivax is headquartered in South San Francisco, California. Visit www.centivax.com and follow @Centivax on X.

SOURCE Centivax, Inc.