Epitopea, a Cambridge, UK- and Montreal, Canada-based cancer immunotherapeutics company, raised USD $31M in Pre-Series A funding.
Backers included Investissement Québec, adMare BioInnovations, Jonathan Milner, existing investors Advent Life Sciences, CTI Life Sciences, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Fonds de Solidarité FTQ, the Harrington Discovery Institute, IRICoR and Novateur Ventures.
The company intends to use the funds for the strategic development and clinical entry of lead Cryptigen immunotherapeutics.
Led by CEO Dr. Alan C. Rigby, Epitopea is a cancer immunotherapeutics company developing accessible off-the-shelf RNA-based immunotherapies for use in hard-to-treat cancers by targeting a new class of untapped tumor-specific antigens, which are known as CryptigenTM TSAs, that are broadly shared across multiple patients with the same tumor type.The company has created an extensive library of novel CryptigenTM TSAs, discovered by its proprietary CryptoMapTM platform that leverages immunopeptidomics, genomics, and a bioinformatics pipeline, allowing the identification of aberrantly-expressed, tumour-specific antigens (aeTSA’s) that are hidden within cancer’s ’junk’ DNA. These hidden CryptigenTM TSAs were first discovered through research led by Drs. Claude Perreault and Pierre Thibault at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer at the Université de Montréal.
To date, the company has raised financing of more than USD $45M.
Epitopea was founded in 2021 and consists of sister companies based in Cambridge, UK and in Montreal, Canada.
FinSMEs
24/10/2024