Tikva Allocell, a biotechnology company developing engineered, allogeneic cell therapies for solid tumors, announced the closing of an $8 million Series A financing led by Kantharos Capital. Proceeds will fund activities required to enable an Investigational New Drug application and support a planned year-end 2026 IND submission for TAVST01, the company’s lead candidate targeting B7-H3-positive solid tumors.
TAVST01 targets B7-H3, a protein expressed across a range of difficult-to-treat solid tumors, including lung, breast, prostate, pancreatic, and pediatric cancers. Unlike conventional donor-derived cell therapies, which the company says are often cleared by a patient’s immune system before they can act, TAVST01 is built from Epstein-Barr virus-specific T cells that the body naturally sustains and has been engineered to resist immune rejection. The therapy is built on the company’s ALLO SerpinB9 EBVST platform, an allogeneic, virus-specific T-cell technology licensed exclusively from Baylor College of Medicine, which combines a B7-H3-targeting receptor with an optimized form of SerpinB9, a natural inhibitor of the enzyme immune cells use to attack donor cells.
Subject to regulatory clearance, Tikva plans to initiate a Phase 1 clinical trial in patients with advanced B7-H3-positive cancer at sites in Singapore and the United States. The company’s scientific foundation draws on research from Baylor College of Medicine by Dr. Malcolm Brenner, Dr. Cliona Rooney, and Dr. Helen Heslop, who co-founded Tikva alongside CEO Dr. Ivan Horak.
KEY QUOTES:
“Cell therapy has transformed the treatment of blood cancers but has repeatedly stalled at the solid-tumor door, the donor cells either fail to persist or are eliminated by the patient’s immune system before they can act. We started from a different place: a virus-fighting T cell the body naturally sustains, armed to seek out B7-H3 and engineered to withstand the rejection that defeats most donor-derived approaches, with minimal gene editing.”
Dr. Ivan Horak, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Tikva Allocell
“Our investment reflects strong conviction in both Tikva’s science and its leadership team. Tikva is addressing fundamental challenges that have constrained allogeneic cell therapies, and we believe its ALLO SerpinB9 EBVST platform can extend the reach of cell therapy to solid-tumor patients who today have limited options.”
Terence Tan, Managing Partner, Kantharos Capital
