Kyverna Therapeutics, an Emeryville, Calif.-based cell therapy company engineering a new class of therapies for serious autoimmune diseases, closed an $85m Series B financing.
The round was led by Northpond Ventures with participation from Westlake Village BioPartners, Vida Ventures, and Gilead Sciences (“Gilead”), and new investors RTW Investments, LP, CAM Capital, Insight Partners, HealthCor, LYFE Capital, Intellia Therapeutics, Argentum Peak, Hudson Bay Capital, and jVen Capital.
Led by Dominic Borie, M.D., Ph.D., president and CEO, Kyverna Therapeutics is a cell therapy company engineering a new class of therapies for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The therapeutic platform combines advanced T-cell engineering and synthetic biology technologies to suppress or eliminate the autoreactive immune cells at the origin of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. In addition to developing next-generation chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) therapies in both autologous and allogeneic settings, the company is creating synReg T cells, a synthetic version of Regulatory T cells (Tregs), natural immune cells that control immune homeostasis through multiple immunosuppressive mechanisms.
The company intends to use the funds to advance KYV-101, an autologous version of a novel clinical-stage anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) construct with properties suited for use in B cell-driven autoimmune diseases such as lupus nephritis, systemic sclerosis, and inflammatory myopathies.
Kyverna has obtained exclusive, worldwide licenses from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use this novel CD19 construct in both autologous and allogeneic CAR T-cell therapies. The company intends to advance KYV-101 into clinical development for autoimmune diseases in the first half of 2022. Consistent with a recently announced licensing and collaboration agreement between Kyverna and Intellia Therapeutics, the financing proceeds will also be used to support the development of KYV-201, an investigational candidate for the treatment of select B cell-driven autoimmune diseases combining the company’s novel CD19 CAR T construct with Intellia’s proprietary ex vivo CRISPR/Cas9-based allogeneic platform.
Proceeds from the financing will also support the continued development of Kyverna’s synReg T-cell platform, engineering a synthetic version of Regulatory T cells (Tregs) by reprogramming T cells into CAR Treg cells. Kyverna has established a strategic collaboration and license agreement with Gilead to develop engineered T-cell therapies for the treatment of autoimmune diseases based on Kyverna’s synReg T-cell platform and synNotch technology from Kite, a Gilead Company.
FinSMEs
26/01/2022