NEW YORK – Engimmune Therapeutics on Tuesday announced that it has raised CHF 15.5 million ($15.9 million) in seed financing, which it will put toward advancing its T-cell receptor (TCR) therapeutics for cancers and autoimmune diseases.
The financing round was led by Swiss venture capital fund Pureos Bioventures and Novo Seeds, the early-stage investment and company creation team of Novo Holdings. Engimmune is also being supported by BaseLaunch, a Swiss incubator and accelerator.
The treatment Engimmune is developing involves engineering both autologous and off-the-shelf TCR-based therapies with the help of genome editing, functional screening, deep sequencing, and machine learning. The Basel, Switzerland-based firm believes that its platform can help address some of the pressing safety and efficacy challenges that drugmakers face in developing TCR T-cell and soluble TCR therapies.
Engimmune — a spinout from the research university ETH Zurich — said it will use the financing to further build out its pipeline as well as expand its research team in Switzerland. Additionally, the company will expand into Denmark, focusing initially on building out good manufacturing practice (GMP)-certified manufacturing, clinical development, and regulatory affairs capabilities.
Along with the financing announcement, Engimmune said on Tuesday that it has brought on a new chairman for its board, Bent Jakobsen. Jakobsen cofounded soluble TCR therapeutics firm Immunocore and adoptive TCR T-cell therapy company Adaptimmune.