Hopewell Therapeutics – a biotechnology company with a differentiated lipid nanoparticle platform harnessing unique ionizable lipid chemistry – announced a seed funding round of up to $25 million to support its operations and growth. This funding round will enable the company to advance the development of genomic medicines based on its differentiated ttLNP platform through both internal pipeline programs and external partnerships.
The seed funding round has been supported by scientific-focused venture investors including Mass Ave Capital, 5Y Capital, HIKE Capital, BOPU Capital, IMO Capital, and WS Investments. And the seed funding round has been conducted across multiple tranches, with a majority of funds received by the company to date in addition to further commitments from existing investors.
The company established operations in 2021 with Scientific Founder Qiaobing Xu, Ph.D., Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University and Chief Technology Officer at Hopewell, and is led by Louis Brenner, M.D., an experienced biotech industry executive, who serves as the Company’s President and Chief Executive Officer. And Hopewell holds exclusive licenses to its ttLNP intellectual property estate from Tufts University for use in a broad field of clinical and commercial applications and has established multiple research relationships with leading industry partners.
With a decade of peer-reviewed publications, Hopewell’s ttLNPs have been shown to deliver a variety of high-impact genomic cargoes, including mRNA, siRNA, DNA, gene editing and gene-writing apparatus, to organs, tissues, and cells throughout the body, with the potential to impact multiple areas of medicine. And the company is developing its proprietary chemistry to create ionizable lipids that can overcome the drug delivery limitations of current LNP approaches in terms of organ and tissue targeting, biocompatibility, and sustained expression with repeat dosing.
The research conducted by Hopewell and industry partners in progressive animal models, including non-human primates (NHP), has demonstrated high translatability for systemic delivery to targeted tissues across species. And Hopewell plans to focus its initial internal pipeline efforts on developing therapeutics for diseases of the lung, having recently demonstrated high transfection efficiency for systemic delivery to multiple epithelial cell types in the lung alveoli in multiple species. Furthermore, results from multiple studies of systemic delivery of Hopewell’s LNPs have shown the first-ever high transfection of genetic cargoes in the basal epithelial cells of the lung and trachea. Reaching these pulmonary progenitor cells with genomic medicines may unlock the potential to treat a variety of challenging lung diseases.
Along with its pulmonary programs, Hopewell’s LNPs have shown promise in multiple pre-clinical disease models. Its lymphoid organ-specific LNPs exploit a scientifically validated strategy for developing the next-generation mRNA vaccines for cancer immunotherapy. And early preclinical data have demonstrated the LNP-mRNA elicited robust CD8+ T-cell responses to encoded antigens, exhibiting notable protective and therapeutic effects in cancer models.
The recent NHP experiments with our LNP-mRNA encoded Bispecific T-cell Engager (BiTE) have demonstrated dose-dependent protein expression and long-lasting and deep B-cell depletion effects, suggesting alternative approaches to injectable antibodies and CAR-T cell therapy to treat B-cell malignancies and autoimmune diseases. But ttLNPs have also been used to deliver multiple therapeutic cargo types including mRNA, oligonucleotides, proteins, and small molecules to the central nervous system via both systemic and local delivery.
Hopewell is led by a team of seasoned executives with expertise spanning all stages of the drug discovery and development process, as well as deep experience in drug delivery systems and building biotech companies.
— President and Chief Executive Officer – Louis Brenner, M.D.
— Founder and Chief Technology Officer – Qiaobing Xu, Ph.D.
— Chief Scientific Officer – Kate Zhang, Ph.D.
— Chief Operating Officer – Tom Hennessey, Jr.
— Chief Business Officer – Geoffrey Swire
KEY QUOTES:
“Hopewell Therapeutics seeks to redefine the non-viral delivery space for novel genomic medicines by designing systemically-administered LNPs to specifically target extrahepatic tissues and cells throughout the body. The groundbreaking research and intellectual property in LNP design and delivery established by Professor Xu over the last decade provide a solid foundation for Hopewell to develop our own internal pipeline, initially targeting diseases of the lung, while concurrently exploring the potential of our ttLNP platform for patients with unmet needs in oncology, infectious diseases, rare genetic diseases, and neurological disorders. We will also continue to pursue industry partnerships that leverage the full potential of our unique ttLNP platform technology.”
— Dr. Brenner
“I am delighted with the support we have received from our scientific venture investors who recognize the promising data demonstrating the ability of our ttLNPs to overcome the limitations of existing LNP approaches, including allowing for highly targeted systemic delivery and sustained expression with repeat dosing. I began designing novel LNPs for genetic drug delivery during my post-doctoral work in the laboratory of Professor Robert Langer at MIT and carried it forward as I built my own research group at Tufts. We continue to innovate and expand our ttLNP platform, as we develop LNPs with the potential to bring next-generation genomic medicines to patients with high unmet medical needs.”
— Professor Xu
“It has been gratifying to support the establishment and evolution of Hopewell including the coming together of foundational IP, high-impact scientific publications, Company-generated data, strategic investment and experienced management, all catalyzed by the Seed Financing. Hopewell’s ttLNP platform and robust portfolio of ionizable lipids have the potential to change the treatment paradigms of multiple diseases.”
— Howie Rosen, Chairman of the Board of Hopewell Therapeutics
