The first wave of cell therapy involves the use of patients’ own immune cells to perform personalized cancer treatments in a long, tedious and expensive process. Wugen Therapies made with cells from healthy donors are being developed, which offers the potential for “off the shelf” treatments. The main items of stealth biotechnology are already being tested in humans. As the company prepares to advance more projects to the clinic, it has raised $172 million in funding for its research.
Abingworth and Tybourne Capital Management led Round B The financing announced on Thursday.
Wugen split its business between St. Louis and San Diego and is developing a therapy based on immune cells called natural killer (NK) cells. These cells have evolved to fight cancer and infections, but they are rare. Wugen obtains NK cells from healthy donors and then transforms them to better kill cancer targets and extend their duration in the body. These cells are then proliferated and cryopreserved, ready to be used as a ready-made treatment option for emergencies. It calls these cells memory NK cells.
The main item in the Wugen pipeline is WU-NK-101, which is an NK therapy being developed for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The original cell therapy, chimeric antigen receptor T cells, or CAR T, received the first FDA approval for blood cancer, but they have not yet been able to treat solid tumors. Wugen aims to overcome these limitations. The company has obtained encouraging data from early clinical trials.
“In the ongoing Phase 1/2 clinical trials, our lead product WU-NK-101 has shown an impressive complete remission rate in relapsed/refractory AML. We look forward to entering the global market later this year. Central research,” Wugen President and CEO Dan Kemp said in a prepared statement.
This major project is still in the preclinical development stage for head and neck cancer and melanoma. Another NK project WK-NK-201 is in the discovery stage of solid tumors.
In addition to NK research, Wugen is still prescribing successful CAR T therapy. T cells from healthy donors are carefully designed to remove components that can instruct T cells to kill the patient’s own cells or trigger a deadly immune response. Wugen’s CAR T therapy WU-CART-007 is preparing for the first phase test of T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a rare cancer most commonly seen in children and young adults. Both NK and CAR T technologies are licensed from the University of Washington.
Wugen said that it will use the financing to continue the clinical development of its memory NK cell platform and advance research on patients with severe AML and other cancer indications (including solid tumors). The company also plans to use the cash to bring its wider channels into clinics.
The latest five financings added new investors Fidelity Management & Research Company, Intermediate Capital Group, Sands Capital, Aisling Capital Management, Alexandria Venture Investments, Velosity Capital and Falcon Edge Capital. Earlier investors RiverVest Venture Partners, LYZZ Capital and Lightchain Capital also participated.
In terms of financing, Wugen’s board of directors is adding Bali Muralidhar, managing partner of Abingworth, Bosun Hau, managing director of Tybourne Capital Management, and Peter Kiener, venture partner of ICG.
Images from the public domain National Cancer Institute
