E25Bio Raises $2.3M in Seed Funding

E25Bio, a Cambridge, Mass.-based provider of rapid, point-of-care, diagnostic technology, raised $2.3m in seed funding.

 

The round was led by The Engine, with participation from Alumni Ventures Group and angel investor Alejandro Chavez.

Founded in 2018 by Jeff Takle, CEO, based on technology developed by Drs. Irene Bosch and Lee Gehrke and licensed from MIT, E25Bio is developing rapid diagnostic test technology for at-home-use that can detect dangerous infectious diseases such as the acute febrile illnesses in minutes instead of days.

The first product is an over-the-counter test for patients appearing with fever, which is able to screen for active viruses and enables a more rapid and accurate diagnosis of infectious diseases in time to receive potentially life-saving treatment.

E25Bio has completed clinical studies and has initiated regulatory submission in its first target geographies.

Source. FinSMEs, August 26, 2010,  

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Houston-based AlloVir Raises $120 Million Series B For Virus-Targeting Immunotherapies

By James Rowley 

Houston-based biopharmaceutical company AlloVir (formerly known as ViraCyte) recently announced $120 million in Series B funding. Fidelity Management and Research Company led the deal. Participating investors include Gilead Sciences, F2 Ventures, Invus, Leerink Partners, Redmile Group, EcoR1 Capital, and Samsara BioCapital.

AlloVir is also the first venture to publicly join the portfolio of ElevateBio, a recently-launched Cambridge, MA-based company which aims to advise and assist cell and gene therapy upstarts throughout the discovery, development, and commercialization lifecycle. Earlier this month, ElevateBio announced it raised $150 million in venture funding led by UBS Oncology Impact Fund. AlloVir financiers Samsara BioCapital, Redmile Group, and EcoR1 Capital also back ElevateBio.

According to a press release published by ElevateBio on Wednesday, AlloVir “is a leading innovator in allogenic, off-the-shelf, multi-virus specific T-cell immunotherapies.” What does that mean?

Let’s break it down:

“Allogenic,” meaning, basically, that biological material used to create the company’s treatments are sourced from (compatible) donors, rather than from the patient themselves.

 

“Off-the-shelf,” in this specific case, means that AlloVir’s products could be integrated into a treatment regime immediately, sitting in storage in the meantime. In the context of T-cell therapeutics (which we’ll get to in a moment), a treatment wouldn’t be “off the shelf” if it required sampling, modifying, and culturing cells from the patient.

 

Jumping out of order a bit: T cells are a foundational part of the human immune system. There are many types of T cells, all of which play specific roles in responding to infection. Cancer patients, HIV positive people, transplant recipients, people with chronic infections, people with autoimmune diseases, or other immuno-suppressed populations have lower counts of these key cells. This makes them more susceptible to infection and illness.

 

According to AlloVir, its primary T cell therapy offering, Viralym-M (ALVR105), can target six different viral pathogens, including: BK virus (which can affect kidney transplant patients), cytomegalovirus, adenovirus, Epstein-Barr virus (which causes mononucleosis, aka “mono”), JC virus, and human herpesvirus 6.

Preliminary research findings on the company’s next therapy, ALVR106, which “targets four common and devastating community-acquired respiratory viruses” were published in the journal Haematologica last month.

So, basically, AlloVir is in the business of sourcing and training immune cells from healthy donors to fight viral infections in folks with compromised immune systems.

AlloVir’s therapies are still in clinical trials. The company published results from its Phase 2 study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, finding that 93 percent of treated patience "demonstrated a clinical response (or met clinical response criteria) following treatment with Viralym-M.” ElevateBio CEO David Hallal told Xconomy that AlloVir will start Phase 3 trials of Viralym-M in 2020.

AlloVir’s as-yet-unnamed ALVR106—targeting respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, parainfluenza virus, and human metapneumovirus—is expected to enter the first phase of clinical trials within the next 12 months, according to coverage in Biospace.

This latest funding round brings AlloVir’s total backing to at least $159 million. The company (which at the time was still called ViraCyte) filed a Form D with the SEC in September 2018. The regulatory filing disclosed the company closed at least $30 million out of a targeted $50 million funding round. It’s unclear whether ViraCyte has closed the remaining $20 million from that round.

Prior to that deal, the company raised $8.99 million in grant funding from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

Note. The Crunnchbase News team are not doctors or medical researchers, and we don’t play them on the internet. If we got any part of this wrong, please email the author: jason@crunchbase.com

Source. Crunchbase, James Rowley, May 23, 2019

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Sherlock Biosciences raises $31M to apply CRISPR technology to diagnostics

By Alaric Dearment

A startup planning to apply CRISPR technology to diagnostics has raised its first major round of venture capital financing a month after its founding.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Sherlock Biosciences said Tuesday that it had raised $31 million in a Series A round, led by Northpond Ventures and Baidu Ventures, with additional contributions from the Open Philanthropy Project and other investors. The company was launched last month with $35 million in initial financing, which included a $17.5 million non-dilutive grant and another investment by the Open Philanthropy Project.

The company’s founders are several veterans of the diagnostics industry and gene-editing science, including CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang of The Broad Institute.

Its stated desire is to use the new funding to “disrupt” diagnostics by developing molecular diagnostics that can rapidly deliver accurate and inexpensive results in areas like oncology, infectious diseases, at-home testing, low-resource settings and agriculture.

The company has in-licensed two technology platforms from The Broad and Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. From The Broad, it has licensed SHERLOCK, developed by Zhang and others, and from Wyss it has licensed the molecular diagnostics platform INSPECTR.

SHERLOCK – whose name is derived from “specific high-sensitivity enzymatic reporter unlocking” – works by amplifying genetic sequences and programming a CRISPR molecule to detect specific genetic signatures in samples, releasing a signal when those signatures are detected. According to the company, SHERLOCK is able to detect the unique genetic “fingerprints” of almost any DNA or RNA sequence in an organism of pathogen. The INSPECTR acronym is derived from “internal splint-pairing expression cassette translation reaction.” It works through synthetic biology and synthetic gene networks and enables the creation of instrument-free diagnostic devices.

The company’s application of CRISPR to diagnostics is a departure from the more well-known uses of the technology, which have primarily focused on therapeutic gene-editing. In February, a Phase I/II clinical trial of a therapy developed using the technology in beta-thalassemia, run by Boston-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Switzerland’s CRISPR Therapeutics, dosed its first patient. And last week, a Phase I clinical trial at the University of Pennsylvania of a cell therapy sponsored by Mustang Bio dosed its first two patients, one with multiple myeloma and one with a sarcoma.

Source. Medcity News, Alaric Dearment, April 23, 2019

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