Kyverna Nets Another $85M to Propel Lead Autoimmune Asset
Kyverna President and CEO Dominic Borie, M.D., Ph.D/Courtesy Kyverna Therapeutics
Kyverna Therapeutics has secured an additional $85 million following a successful Series B financing round to support various projects in its pipeline of therapies for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.
The amount, which was oversubscribed at closing, will be used to enhance research and development efforts for KYV-101, an autologous version of a novel clinical-stage anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) construct that has strong potential to treat different types of autoimmune illnesses, including systemic sclerosis, lupus nephritis and inflammatory myopathies.
"The funds will be used to advance KYV-101 into Phase II, leveraging an innovative trial design seeking to demonstrate proof of concept for select B-cell-driven autoimmune disease," Kyverna President and CEO Dominic Borie, M.D., Ph.D. told Biospace.
Early this month, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded Kyverna an exclusive worldwide license to use this construct in allogeneic and autologous CAR T-cell therapies. The decision was based largely on data from preclinical studies that show its ability to significantly deplete B cells, thus opening plenty of doors for sustainable treatment.
Some of the autoimmune diseases where B cells are involved include rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes and systemic lupus. The company said the funds it has now make it even more well-positioned to begin clinical development of KYV-101 in the first half of this year.
Part of the $85 million will also be used for development efforts of KYV-201, Kyverna's investigational candidate for treating select B-cell-driven autoimmune diseases, which combines its CD19 CAR T construct with Intellia Therapeutics' proprietary ex vivo CRISPR/Cas9-based allogeneic platform.
"We envision nomination of a development candidate in 2022. A path to 'allo' is central to Kyverna's strategy and we are therefore very excited with the prospect of this combination. A differentiated, well-tolerated and 'off-the-shelf' approach may enable outpatient administration and support broad access for patients with B cell-driven autoimmune diseases. The funds will also support advancement of our innovative synReg platform, which we intend to apply to tame autoimmunity for those diseases associated with deficits in the function or numbers of regulatory T cells," Borie said.
The synReg T-cell platform engineers a synthetic version of regulatory T cells by reprogramming them into CAR Treg cells. Kyverna has an existing agreement with Gilead Sciences to develop such therapies to treat autoimmune illnesses based on its synReg T-cell platform and synNotch technology from Gilead company Kite.
Along with the announcement, the company shared that Northpond Ventures director Shaan Gandhi, M.D., DPhil, and RTW Investments senior analyst Chris Liu, Ph.D. will be joining the Kyverna board of directors as a member and observer respectively.
The funding round was led by Northpond Ventures, while additional investors included CAM Capital, Gilead, Vida Ventures, Intellia and Westlake Village BioPartners.