NEW YORK – Geneos Therapeutics on Wednesday announced that it raised $5 million in a Series A3 financing round, which it will put toward testing the activity of its personalized cancer vaccine, GNOS-PV02, in liver cancer patients.
The Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania-based firm is developing its personalized cancer vaccine combined with plasmid-encoded interleukin-12 and Merck's checkpoint inhibitor Keytruda (pembrolizumab) as a treatment for patients with previously treated, advanced hepatocellular carcinoma. The personalized vaccine targets patient-specific neoantigens that Geneos identifies using its tumor sequencing platform GT-EPIC.
In an ongoing Phase Ib/IIa trial of the vaccine-based combination regimen, three out of the first 24 patients enrolled experienced complete responses, and four had a partial response. Based on this, Geneos expanded the trial's target enrollment to 36 patients and plans to report data from the full cohort this year.
Geneos, which Inovio Pharmaceuticals spun off in 2019 with $10.5 million in initial financing, has since raised $12 million in a 2021 Series A1 round and $17 million through a Series A2 financing last year. The Series A3 financing round adds 3B Future Health Fund (FHF) to Geneos' investor syndicate, and 3B FHF Managing Director and General Partner Roberto DePonti will join Geneos as a board observer.