Verismo Therapeutics – a clinical-stage CAR T company, Penn spinout, and pioneer of the novel KIR-CAR platform technology – recently announced it has raised $17 million in a second pre-Series A financing round. The funding round will support the continued advancement of the clinical trial for SynKIR-110, a first-in-class KIR-CAR T cell immunotherapy candidate for solid tumors, and pre-clinical development of SynKIR™-310, a KIR-CAR T cell immunotherapy therapeutic for blood cancers.
This funding round was co-led by DongKoo Bio, HLB Innovation, and HLB. And the funding round will be used to advance multiple programs targeting solid and liquid tumors. With this $17 million investment Verismo will have secured a total of $50 million in financing since launching in 2020.
The KIR-CAR platform is a dual-chain CAR T cell therapy. It has been shown in preclinical animal models to maintain antitumor T cell activity even in challenging solid tumor environments. DAP12 acting as a novel costimulatory molecule for T cells, aids additional T cell-stimulating pathways, further sustaining chimeric receptor expression and improving KIR-CAR T cell persistence. And this continued T cell function, and persistence can lead to ongoing regression of solid tumors in preclinical models, including those refractory to traditional CAR T cell therapies. Plus the KIR-CAR platform can be combined with many additional emerging technologies, such as in vivo gene engineering, advanced cell manufacturing and reprogramming, combinational therapies, and even allogeneic cellular therapies to provide the next-generation multimodal targeted immunotherapy for patients in need.
