- Kyverna Therapeutics is a cell therapy company engineering a new class of therapies for serious autoimmune diseases, which recently raised $25 million
Kyverna Therapeutics is a cell therapy company engineering a new class of therapies for serious autoimmune diseases. And Kyverna announced it has raised $25 million in Series A funding from Vida Ventures and Westlake Village BioPartners, both of which were founding investors. And Gilead Sciences also joined the round.
This funding round will be used to advance Kyverna’s therapeutic strategy — which combines advanced T cell engineering and synthetic biology technologies to suppress and eliminate autoreactive immune cells at the root cause of inflammatory disease.
Dominic Borie, M.D., Ph.D., has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer and Jeffrey Greve, Ph.D. will continue to serve as Kyverna’s Chief Scientific Officer (CSO). Before joining Kyverna, Dr. Greve founded and served as CSO of Delinia, an autoimmune disease company (acquired by Celgene in 2017).
And as part of the financing, Fred Cohen, M.D., D.Phil. (Co-Founder and Senior Managing Director of Vida Ventures) will serve as Chairman of the Board. Beth Seidenberg, M.D. (Co-Founding Managing Director of Westlake Village BioPartners), Desmond Padhi, B.Sc., Pharm. D. (Principal at Westlake Village BioPartners), Brian Kotzin, M.D. (Senior Vice President of Nektar Therapeutics), Peter Emtage, Ph.D. (Senior Vice President, Global Head of Research at Kite), an additional representative from Vida Ventures to be named, and Dominic Borie, M.D., Ph.D. will serve on the company’s the board of directors.
“We are just beginning to see the potential for cell therapy and the opportunity to change the course of disease. Dominic’s skill as an immunologist and transplant surgeon, coupled with his proven leadership skill as an executive in the biopharmaceutical industry is what we require to embark on our bold vision for Kyverna,” said Fred Cohen, M.D., D.Phil., Co-Founder and Senior Managing Director of Vida Ventures. “At Vida, we have a long-standing commitment to advancing cell therapy. We believe the team at Kyverna, under Dominic’s stewardship and in partnership with Dr. Greve, the architect of the Kyverna scientific platform, has the ability to develop a new class of therapies for serious autoimmune diseases.”
Kyverna also announced it entered into a strategic collaboration and license agreement with Gilead to develop engineered T cell therapies for the treatment of autoimmune disease based on Kyverna’s synthetic Treg platform and synNotch technology from Kite (a Gilead Company).
“This may be one of the most exciting times is our industry where a new modality has the potential to become the backbone of treatment for a variety of severe immune-related diseases,” added Dominic Borie, M.D., Ph.D., newly appointed CEO of Kyverna. “This opportunity perfectly unites my experience as a surgeon, academic and drug developer with my passion for finding cures for autoimmune diseases. I am proud to serve as Kyverna’s CEO and be a part of this team.”
Kyverna is going to be responsible for conducting research activities and initial clinical studies through proof-of-concept and Gilead will be granted an option, upon the exercise of which Gilead will be solely responsible for further clinical development and commercialization efforts for these programs.
And Gilead will provide an upfront payment of $17.5 million to Kyverna. And Kyverna may earn an additional $570 million in development and commercialization milestones. Plus Kyverna will also continue to advance its platform and develop proprietary programs beyond the Gilead collaboration.
“Kyverna’s approach combines advanced T cell engineering and synthetic biology technologies to develop significant new therapies for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases,” stated Beth Seidenberg, M.D., Co-Founding Managing Director of Westlake Village BioPartners. “The strategic collaboration with Gilead Sciences in autoimmune diseases enables Kyverna to apply its therapeutic approach to this important unmet need.”
Dr. Borie is known as an accomplished immunologist and digestive tract and liver transplant surgeon with extensive experience in drug development. And he joins Kyverna from Horizon Therapeutics where he served as Vice-President and Head, External Research and Development. Before Horizon, Dr. Borie served in numerous leadership functions within Genentech focused on global clinical development of immunology therapies including two anti-CD20 molecules (rituximab and obinutuzumab) in development for orphan immunology indications.
