Strand Therapeutics’ lead asset is STX-001, an intra-tumor self-replicating mRNA therapy that carries a payload expressing the immunomodulatory protein IL-12.
Strand Therapeutics on Thursday closed a $153 million series B round that will help it advance its pipeline of novel mRNA therapies for cancer and other chronic conditions.
The fundraising round, backed by some of the biggest names in pharma, including Eli Lilly, Amgen and Regeneron, brings Strand’s total raise value to more than $250 million, according to its news release on Thursday. The Massachusetts biotech brought in $97 million in series A earnings in November 2022 and bagged a $400,000 award from the National Institutes of Health a year earlier.
Strand is using the money to develop programmable mRNA therapies, with its pipeline anchored by the early-stage STX-001, an investigational construct that encodes for the immunomodulatory protein IL-12. STX-001 is delivered directly into a tumor in an attempt reshape its microenvironment, in turn triggering a systemic anti-cancer immune response. Strand is testing STX-001 for advanced solid tumors, particularly melanoma and triple-negative breast cancer.
Uniquely, Strand’s approach makes use of self-replicating mRNA. On its website, the biotech notes that its therapies include “logic circuits” that can help control and determine the location, timing and degree of expression of its payload, in turn “enabling precise and controlled delivery.”
STX-001 is in an ongoing first-in-human Phase I study in patients with solid tumors that are refractory to immune checkpoint inhibitors. STX-001 monotherapy has shown signals of treatment response, Strand reported in May this year. These results likewise detected several partial responses and a confirmed case of complete response.
Aside from STX-001, Strand is also advancing STX-003, which on Thursday the biotech called a “world-first systemically administrable mRNA therapy with tumor targeting.” STX-003 is also self-replicating and similarly carries an IL-12-expressing payload.
Strand expects to start dosing STX-003 in patients next year, as per a company announcement in May.
Strand’s mRNA push, however, could run into some high-level headwinds. On Wednesday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. axed 22 contracts under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority that dealt with mRNA vaccine technology. Kennedy said that he elected to scrap these programs, collectively worth nearly $500 million, “because the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.” He did not offer evidence to support this claim.
There is no indication yet that this push will extend to the use of mRNA technology in other modalities outside of vaccines, but experts are already concerned that the political pushback against mRNA vaccines could have far-reaching implications. Speaking to BioSpace in May, Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said that mRNA “became a victim of disinformation, and a victim of sort of the political zeitgeist, which was to push back on vaccines.” Offit additionally expressed concern that this sentiment could extend to mRNA research into other applications, including cancer therapeutics.
