NEW YORK – Cell therapy firm Kyverna Therapeutics on Thursday announced that new investors contributed $60 million in additional funds to an oversubscribed Series B funding round bringing the total raised in the round to $145 million.
Bain Capital Life Sciences and GordonMD Global Investments contributed funds as new investors alongside existing investors Gilead Sciences, Westlake Village BioPartners, Vida Ventures, Northpond Ventures, RTW Investments, Insight Partners, CAM Capital, LYFE Capital, jVen Capital, and others.
Emeryville, California-based Kyverna will use the funds to develop its anti-CD19 CAR T-cell therapies, KYV-101 and KYV-201, for treating autoimmune diseases.
In testing KYV-101 in a Phase I/II study involving 20 cancer patients, the company noted the cell therapy caused fewer cytokine-driven side effects, such as immune effector cells-associated neurotoxicity syndrome, and reduced immunogenicity resulting in better cell persistence at one month. Based on this, Kyverna believes KYV-101 may work particularly well as a treatment for autoimmune diseases and obtained worldwide licenses from the National Institutes of Health to use the same cell therapy construct to make autologous and allogeneic versions of treatments in this setting.
In July, the firm began studying KYV-101, the autologous version, in lupus nephritis in the US in a Phase I trial. There is also a Phase I/II trial of KYV-101 ongoing in Germany. KYV-201 is the allogeneic version of the anti-CD19 CAR T-cell construct that Kyverna is studying as a treatment for lupus nephritis and other B cell-driven autoimmune diseases.
"We are pleased by the increasing investor confidence in the promise of Kyverna's anti-CD19 CAR T-cell therapy for autoimmune diseases," Kyverna CFO Ryan Jones said in a statement. "This Series B extension will fund Kyverna's clinical studies in the US and Europe, enabling us to move more quickly toward bringing potentially transformative and lifesaving therapies to patients."
Kyverna plans to share data from ongoing drug trials in the second half of 2023.