Syncona backs Quell financing – Syncona Ltd has made a new £25.3m commitment to a £61.0m expanded Series A financing for Quell Therapeutics. This is the largest amount of funding to date for any stand-alone engineered T regulatory cell (Treg) company [see below] and takes Syncona’s total commitment to this business to £59.3m (of which £35.1m has been invested – valued at cost in its accounts). Syncona will have a 74% fully diluted stake in Quell.
Quell was established in 2019, with the aim of developing engineered Treg cell therapies. Tregs are a subset of T cells found naturally in circulation, with the potential to downregulate the immune system. Quell is seeking to utilise the power of these natural Treg cells to advance therapies for the management and treatment of a range of diseases including solid organ transplant rejection, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.
The company’s first programme aims to improve rejection rates in liver transplants. Quell has a potential therapy to trial in the first half of 2022. The business has now expanded its pipeline, working in partnership with Syncona to identify and prioritise two promising research programmes for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and type 1 diabetes. The Quell team will advance these programmes in part through its existing collaborations with world leading institutions: the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) at the University of Sheffield and the Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endocrinology at Hannover Medical School (MHH), to broaden its focus beyond transplant and continue research in neuroinflammation and autoimmune disease.
The expanded Series A financing should finance Quell’s plans to take its first programme into the clinic for trials, progress its research programmes in diabetes and ALS, develop a scalable manufacturing process [an important step to monetising any treatment] and expand its senior leadership team.
Iain McGill, chief executive of Quell Therapeutics, said: “We have selected our first clinical candidate, QEL-001, and are progressing well through process development. In parallel we have leveraged our Modular Engineered Treg platform to build out a valuable pipeline in autoimmune and neuroinflammatory diseases. We are leading the scientific field in bringing these potentially transformative therapies to patients, with our lead programme expected to be the first multiply engineered Treg therapy to enter the clinic.”
Quarterly update
Separately, Syncona has published a quarterly update for the three months to the end of December 2020. Highlights are:
- NAV 201.1p, return -1.1%
- £81m deployed
- £614.6m, 93% of which is in cash, available to deploy
- Freeline reported positive data in its Phase I/II trial in Haemophilia B demonstrating potential for a functional cure with Factor IX expression levels in the normal range and decided to modify the clinical development plan for its FLT180a program for Hemophilia B – working towards filing an application with the FDA in 2024.
- Gyroscope dosed first patients in its Phase II programme for dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) which comprises one trial where patients have a mutation in Complement Factor I and a second trial focused on a broader patient population
- Achilles continued to dose patients in its first two programmes: non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and melanoma and raised £52.7m from a series C financing. This deal added 1.6p to the NAV. (Syncona still has a 34% stake). The company is considering an IPO. It has dosed the first six patients in its phase I/II trials for non-small cell lung cancer and melanoma which showed no significant safety issues. Achilles now plans to move to higher doses.
- Anaveon published encouraging pre-clinical data on its selective interleukin-2 (IL-2) agonist at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) demonstrating a high level of activity and excellent safety profile
- Autolus decided to prioritise its AUTO1 programme for Adult Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) and will seek partnership opportunities to fund additional clinical development plans for AUTO3, in relapsed/refractory diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Overall headcount cut by approximately 20%.
- Syncona founded Puresping targeting kidney focused AAV gene therapies.
SYNC : Syncona backs Quell financing