- Affini-T Therapeutics has raised $175 million to develop new cancer treatments.
- The cell therapy startup is hoping to fight solid tumors with edited human immune cells.
- Insider got the 24-page pitch deck the company used to raise money from investors like Leaps by Bayer.
A new cell therapy startup just raised a $175 million combination Series A and B round, fueling its effort to develop new treatments that could fight some of the toughest-to-treat types of cancer.
Affini-T Therapeutics wants to tackle hard-to-treat types of cancer by improving immunotherapy treatments, which engineer a patients’ own immune cells to better fight cancer cells. The first cell therapy programs, which are now approved treatments, have been transformative in treating certain types of blood cancers, but those benefits have yet to translate to other types of cancer. Affini-T is aiming to bring cell therapy’s benefits to solid tumors.
“The vast majority of tumors, and the vast majority of lost lives, is really due to solid tumors,” said Juergen Eckhardt, the head of Leaps by Bayer, which co-led Affini-T’s financing round alongside Vida Ventures. “The big killers are colon cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer. For those, we don’t really have any good therapies available yet.”
The Seattle- and Boston-based startup is based on research by Juno Therapeutics cofounder and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center immunologist Phil Greenberg. Juno was a cell therapy pioneer that was bought by Celgene in 2018 for $9 billion.
Among a crowded and competitive space, Affini-T stands apart by what it’s targeting, said Jak Knowles, the CEO and cofounder of Affini-T. In particular, the company is focused on two genetic mutations that are common across many types of cancer, located on genes called KRAS and p53.
“These are foundational to how the cancer is growing,” he said. “KRAS allows the cells to divide faster.”
Affini-T’s approach is to edit a type of immune cell called T-cells, that normally fight cancers and viruses, to better recognize these mutations. When these edited T-cells see these specific mutations, they then kill the cancerous cells.
Affini-T is still in the earliest stages of research, but hopes to have two treatments enter human testing next year. The plan is to run a study that recruits patients with a range of cancers, including pancreatic, lung, and colorectal, to see where the drug could be most effective.
In the meantime, an infusion of $175 million will provide enough cash runway for three years, and get Affini-T to the point of having clinical results, Knowles said. In the current biotech market, with biotech indices down more than 20% on the year, going public is not top of mind.
“We’re very happy to be a private company in this environment, and that’s part of the reason why we wanted to raise a large sum of money,” Knowles said.
Here is the 24-slide presentation Affini-T used to raise $175 million from Leaps By Bayer, Vida Ventures, and other investors.
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