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During the past few months, several antibody–drug conjugates (ADC)/radioligand companies have completed financings, hoping to change the course of cancer treatment. Radiopharmaceutical company RayzeBio based in San Diego, CA, for example, raised a huge $160 million from new and existing investors in a series D financing that brings the total raised to $418 million since August 2020, when it began operating. RayzeBio is developing a pipeline of novel drug conjugates against validated solid tumor targets. Its lead clinical candidate, RYZ101, is designed to deliver Actinium-225 (Ac225), a highly potent alpha-emitting radioisotope, to solid tumors expressing the somatostatin receptor (SSTR), and is being evaluated for treating gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors and extensive stage small cell lung cancer.
Another radiopharmaceutical company AdvanCell located in Sydney, Australia raised AUD18 million in a series B financing. Targeted Alpha Therapy technology involves attaching alpha-emitting isotopes to highly-specific targeting molecules to deliver radiation directly to cancer cells. AdvanCell’s lead clinical program 212Pb-ADVC001 is a best-in-class treatment for metastatic prostate cancer, and the company also has candidates for melanoma, pancreatic and breast cancer. Moreover, AdvanCell has a world-first in-house alpha isotope generator for the reliable and scalable supply of isotope. The funding will be used in part to expand its manufacturing platform footprint and advance the company’s lead program.
London based Pheon Therapeutics which is developing next generation ADCs for a wide range of hard-to-treat solid tumors, launched in September following a $68 million series A financing in March. Aiming to balance safety and efficacy for each target, Pheon uses both novel and clinically validated monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and arms them with novel proprietary payloads or off-the-shelf linker payload combinations. Pheon’s lead program exploits a novel target that the company says is highly expressed in a broad range of solid tumors.
Also hoping to help cancer patients with next-generation ADCs is Mablink Bioscience (Lyon, France), which raised €31 million from new and existing investors in a series A funding round. Mablink’s technology is based on a unique structure of chemical linkers that masks the cytotoxic molecule. This results in ‘hidden’ ADCs that stay longer in the body, giving them more time to destroy tumor cells, and have greatly improved tolerability—potentially game-changing for clinical successes in the ADC space, according to the company. This financing, which follows E4m seed funding in 2021, will enable Mablink to advance its lead candidate for ovarian cancer to the clinic, and build a pipeline of ADCs for solid tumors.
Several immunotherapy and precision oncology companies also raised/received financing this quarter. For example, 3T Biosciences based in San Francisco, CA, an immunotherapy firm developing next-generation treatments for solid tumors and other immune-mediated diseases, debuted with a $40 million series A round. 3T’s platform combines high-diversity target libraries with active machine learning to identify shared targets and therapeutically active T cell receptors (TCRs) and T cell receptor mimetics (TCRm). By understanding how the immune system recognizes, targets and destroys cancer cells, 3T can identify the most prevalent and immunogenic targets in solid tumors and develop highly-specific, safer and more effective treatments, according to the company. 3T plans to develop bispecifics, peptide vaccines, and novel TCR cell therapies, initially for cancer and then autoimmune diseases and viral infection.
Neukio Biotherapeutics based in Shanghai, China completed a series A-1 financing from new and existing investors, to accelerate discovery and development of next generation immune cell therapy products for treating solid tumors. Neukio exploits the clonality and unlimited replication capability of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) in conjunction with cutting-edge gene editing technologies, and has established an iPSC-CAR-NK-based pipeline development strategy with the aim of launching allogenic off-the-shelf cell therapy products that can be produced in scale. The funding follows a $40 million angel investment.
Also aiming to improve cancer immunotherapy is programmable cell therapy company Arsenal Biosciences located in South San Francisco, CA, which completed a $220 million series B financing from new and existing investors. Arsenal, which launched in late 2019, is using synthetic and computational biology techniques alongside nonviral clinical manufacturing to develop a pipeline of next-generation autologous T cell therapies for solid tumors. Arsenal has candidates in early development for kidney, prostate, and other cancer indications, and the company’s lead candidate for ovarian cancer is about to start clinical trials.
Precision immuno-oncology company Normunity, meanwhile, completed a $65 million series A financing. Working collaboratively with the Lieping Chen lab, Normunity is developing therapies designed to target novel mechanisms that are barriers to normal immune function, thereby restoring the immune system’s intrinsic activity to identify and eliminate cancer cells. The company’s lead program is a mAb targeting a secreted enzyme that is highly upregulated in multiple human cancers and drives the exclusion of T cell infiltration in immuno-sensitive tumors.
Precision oncology company Nested Therapeutics launched with a $90 million series A financing. Nested’s platform utilizes insights from genomics, computational chemistry, proteomics, and AI to reveal cryptic, or newly uncovered, driver mutations and pockets in cancer targets. This should enable the design of novel small molecules for known or previously undruggable targets. The financing, which brings the total raised since the company was founded to $125 million, will enable Nested to advance its pipeline programs, including its lead compound, NEST-1, that targets multiple components of the MAPK pathway.
Also focused on precision oncology is Tavros Therapeutics based in Durham, NC, which raised $7.5 million in an oversubscribed seed II round. The company’s next-generation, bi-directional synthetic lethality platform can precisely and directly identify paired genetic interactions that form the basis for breakthrough targets and first-in-class small-molecule cancer drugs. Tavros leverages cutting-edge functional genomics and computational analysis to uncover unique genetic vulnerabilities within tumors and accelerate discovery of novel de-risked, druggable targets, predictive biomarkers and optimal drug combinations. The goal is to target the right new drugs to the right patients with biomarker-driven strategies, minimized toxicity and improved outcomes. Tavros launched in 2020 with a $3 million seed financing.
This quarter also saw the launch of several companies focused on next-generation RNA medicines. Among them is Capstan Therapeutics which launched with a $102 million series A financing following a $63 million seed round in November 2021. By combining the power of cell therapy with the precision of genetic medicines Capstan aims to develop and deliver precise in vivo engineering of cells with payloads to treat cancer, autoimmune disease, monogenic blood disorders, and fibrosis. For example, the company can engineer T cells with disease-specific mRNA-encoded CARs, encapsulate them in proprietary targeted lipid nanoparticles that direct them to pathogenic cells, where the gene editing machinery can modify the cell’s DNA to treat genetic disease.
Meanwhile, Ascidian Therapeutics based in New York, NY and Boston, MA launched with a $50 million series A financing. Ascidian’s technology involves RNA trans-splicing to replace multiple disease-causing exons with wild-type exons in a single reaction without exogenous enzymes. This enables therapeutic targeting of genes that are too large to package into a viral vector and those with high mutational variance—both beyond the reach of current gene and base editing approaches. Ascidian’s approach is designed to provide the durability of gene therapy while reducing risks associated with DNA editing and manipulation: Native gene expression levels are maintained, the risk of off-target DNA edits limited, and the risk of immunogenicity reduced. Ascidian’s pipeline includes programs in ophthalmology, and neurological, neuromuscular, and rare diseases, with a lead candidate targeting ABCA4 retinopathy.
RNA-based medicine company Orbital Therapeutics based in Cambridge, MA also launched. With access to Beam Therapeutics’ non-viral delivery technology, Orbital is building an RNA platform that integrates both established and emerging RNA and delivery technologies and delivery mechanisms, excluding RNAi. This platform is designed to extend the durability and half-life of Orbital’s novel RNA therapeutics, while also expanding its delivery to a larger number of cell types and tissues. Orbital plans to build an expansive portfolio, initially focused in the areas of vaccines, immunomodulation, protein replacement and regenerative medicine.
