NEW YORK – Resolution Therapeutics on Thursday said it has raised £63.5 million ($83.3 million) in Series B financing led by Syncona.
Edinburgh, UK-based Resolution will use the proceeds to advance its lead candidate RTX001, an autologous macrophage cell therapy for the treatment of end-stage liver disease. The firm expects to begin enrolling patients in the first-in-human Phase I/II trial of RTX001, called EMERALD, in Q4 of this year.
RTX001 is manufactured from patient blood samples, a process in which monocytes are extracted from the blood and converted into macrophages that are engineered to have enhanced regenerative properties. The engineered macrophages are then reinfused into the patient. Resolution is already studying RTX001 in another clinical study, dubbed OPAL, exploring the natural history of liver cirrhosis to provide insights on disease progression. The OPAL trial will also function as the control arm for the upcoming EMERALD study.
Additional funding will be used to invest in the firm's manufacturing platform and to expand its pipeline into other inflammatory and fibrotic indications, such as graft-versus-host disease and lung fibrosis.
"The data that Resolution has generated to date in this emerging area of medicine is encouraging and, in our view, demonstrates the potential that macrophages have in treating end-stage liver disease," Edward Hodgkin, managing partner of Syncona Investment Management Limited and nonexecutive director of Resolution, said in a statement. "This is a potential first-in-class product being developed for a disease where patients have no effective therapeutic options and typically face a liver transplant or further deterioration of their condition, which is often fatal."
Also on Thursday, Resolution appointed Paul Sekhri as chair of its board of directors.