Syncona co-leads funding round for cell therapies developer – Syncona has committed $25m (£19m) to Quell Therapeutics in an up to $156m (£117m) Series B financing round as co-leader alongside specialist global institutional investors Jeito Capital, Ridgeback Capital Investments, SV Health Investors and Fidelity Management & Research Company.
Following the Series B financing Syncona has revalued its existing investment, which has resulted in a £19m uplift (3p per Syncona share) to Syncona’s holding value of Quell, a world leader in developing engineered T-regulatory cell therapies for serious medical conditions driven by the immune system. Including the drawdown of the first tranche of Syncona’s Series B investment of £10m), Syncona’s holding value of Quell is now £74m. On drawdown of the full Series B financing, Syncona’s ownership stake in Quell will be 37%.
Quell is developing engineered Treg cell therapies, seeking to harness the suppressive capacity of Tregs by leveraging their potential to downregulate the immune system, to treat a range of applications, the first of which will be in solid organ transplantation. Quell is currently preparing for one of the first ever clinical trials of an engineered Treg cell therapy with its lead candidate QEL-001, designed to prevent organ rejection in liver transplant patients. This Phase I/II clinical trial, known as LIBERATE, is on track to initiate early next year.
The Series B financing brings Quell to up to $219m (£163m) of total funding to date. Proceeds are expected to continue to fund Quell’s early clinical development of its QEL-001 programme in liver transplantation as well as advance its pipeline elsewhere in its core therapeutic areas of transplantation, neuroinflammatory diseases and autoimmune diseases.
Martin Murphy, Chief Executive Officer of Syncona, said: “In 2019, Syncona co-founded Quell, bringing together pioneering science from leading UK and European universities, with the ambition to develop first-in-class therapies in the ground-breaking Treg field offering the potential to make a real difference to the lives of patients. Since then, the progress made by the Quell team, led by Iain McGill, is remarkable. The business has moved from concept-to-clinic in under three years.
“This financing underlines the progress the company has made to date and the scale of its ambition. Supported by a strong syndicate of global investors, the business will be able to progress its lead program and pipeline, whilst building scalable manufacturing capabilities, as it seeks to entrench its leadership position in an emerging field of innovative medicine.”
SYNC : Syncona co-leads funding round for cell therapies developer