Biotechnology company ImmuneBridge has raised $12m seed financing to advance new natural killer (NK) cell-based immunotherapies.

Co-led by global investors Insight Partners and M Ventures, the financing round has also seen participation from Gaingels and One Way Ventures.

ImmuneBridge is developing allogeneic NK cell-based immunotherapies to treat solid tumours and hematologic malignancies.

According to the company, NK cells represent a platform for allogeneic immunotherapy as they are potent cancer killers, with less risk profile.

The company’s orthogonal approach leverages an expansion technology and a diverse clinic-ready source for accelerating the discovery and translation of potent cell therapies.

Its expansion technology expands hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), which are natural NK cells precursors.

ImmuneBridge CEO and co-founder Peretz Partensky said: “Cell therapy is a new pillar of medicine and is inextricably human. Cell therapy developers fear donor-to-donor variability, yet we humans are unapologetically diverse in our innate immune systems.

“It is natural to identify the most potent therapies from among human diversity—and we can employ genetic engineering to enhance them.”

The company also intends to use the proceeds to create a screening dataset for indication-optimised NK cells, to show scalable manufacturability, and generate pre-clinical data for a lead product.

Insight Partners managing director Dylan Morris said: “By taking advantage of the genotypic diversity of the human immune system, ImmuneBridge has the potential to dramatically improve the way we approach off-the-shelf immunotherapies.”

Reference：

https://www.pharmaceutical-business-review.com/news/immunebridge-new-cell-immunotherapies/