NEW YORK – Vittoria Biotherapeutics said on Tuesday it raised $25 million in private financing to advance its lead oncology candidate VIPER-101, an autologous T-cell therapy for lymphoma.
The funding was led by Valley Forge Investment Corporation, with participation from new investors the Global BioAccess Fund and Hatch Biofund, alongside existing investors Agent Capital, Tellus BioVentures, NYBC Ventures, and the University of Pennsylvania. Concurrent with the financing, Michael Young, partner at Valley Forge Investment Corporation, will join the board of directors of Vittoria Biotherapeutics.
The new funding is a $10 million extension of $15 million in financing secured last year. Philadelphia-based Vittoria spun out of the University of Pennsylvania in 2022.
Vittoria will use the funding to support a Phase I trial of VIPER-101, which was developed with Vittoria's Senza5 platform CAR T-cell therapy platform and can be used to design gene-edited treatments that target the CD5 signaling pathway. CD5 is present on cancer cells in more than 85 percent of patients with T-cell lymphoma, according to Vittoria.
The Phase I trial will include up to 30 patients with relapsed or refractory CD5-positive nodal T-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Patients will need 50 percent or greater expression of CD5 on flow cytometry or immunohistochemistry to enroll in the study. Researchers will evaluate up to five dose levels in the study to determine the recommended Phase II dose.