The company’s focus is on improving immuno-oncology therapies, making them more effective for the patients for whom these new therapies don’t work and by decreasing serious side effects.
Boston-based TScan Therapeutics closed on a Series B financing round, bringing the total funds raised to-date to $48 million. Investors include Novartis Venture Fund, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Bessemer Venture Partners, GV (formerly Google Ventures), and founding investor Longwood Fund.
The company’s focus is on improving immuno-oncology therapies, making them more effective for the patients for whom these new therapies don’t work and by decreasing serious side effects. CAR-T therapies, such as Novartis’ Kymriah, are generally effective in blood cancers. TScan’s technology, which has some similarities to CAR-T, is believed to be effective in solid tumors.
The company’s technology is based on the research of Stephen Elledge, professor of genetics and medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Elledge developed a way to screen cancer cells for undiscovered T-cell receptors (TCR). The technology also can scan the complete group of proteins encoded by the human genome to determine if these proteins and the identified T-cells will interact negatively.
“TScan is committed to unleashing the immune system in patients with the only genome-wide, high-throughput and unbiased system to discover the natural targets of TCRs,” stated David Southwell, TScan’s chief executive officer. “Through the pioneering work of Dr. Elledge, TScan’s technology platform has the potential to uncover new targets in a variety of diseases, including cancer, autoimmunity, and infectious disease. We have made significant progress in discovering novel targets which are shared across cancers and look forward to bringing TCR therapies to patients suffering from both liquid and solid tumors.”
Southwell previously served as president and chief executive officer of Inotek Pharmaceuticals through its merger with Rocket Pharmaceuticals.
Gavin MacBeath is TScan’s chief scientific officer. He was previously chief scientific officer of AbPro. He was also the co-founder and senior vice president of Discovery at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals.
Henry Rath is TScan’s chief business officer. He was previously senior vice president of Corporate Development for Seres Therapeutics.
Robert Crane is chief financial officer. He has acted as senior financial officer and other senior positions in more than 30 companies, including Sirtris, I-STAT, InKLine, Seragen and deCODE.
“Within the tumors of cancer patients are T-cells with the potential to recognize and eliminate those cancer cells,” stated MacBeath. “We are identifying tumor-reactive T-cells in patients that are winning their fight against cancer in order to discover the targets of their T-cells and develop innovative, cell-based therapies for the many patients that are not so fortunate. Importantly, we believe the TScan technology will enable us to expand the currently limited range of targets for T-cell therapy.”
TScan’s technology can be used to create cancer treatments from a patient’s own T-cells in much the same way CAR-T is conducted. However, the company is also building a collection of TCRs that may be able to be used to treat a wider range of patients, a more off-the-shelf approach. If that approach works, it would be likely to cut down on the time and expense involved in the CAR-T approach.
The company believes it will identify lead compounds in the next six to nine months, which will take them into preclinical research. The company indicates the funds raised will last until the end of 2021, at which point the company expects to be in the clinic or close to being so.
