Syncona has added two new companies to its portfolio, iOnctura and Yellowstone Biosciences. Syncona has invested €30m (£25.7m) in iOnctura, an innovative, clinical-stage, small molecule company combating neglected and hard-to-treat cancers, and launched Yellowstone, a new oncology company pioneering soluble bispecific T-cell receptor (TCR)-based therapies, with a £16.5m commitment.
iOnctura
iOnctura is developing selective cancer therapeutics against targets that play critical roles in multiple tumour survival pathways. Syncona invested as part of an €80m Series B financing, which was led by Syncona and included existing investors Merck Ventures, Inkef Capital, Schroders Capital, VI Partners and the 3B Future Health Fund, as well as new investor the European Innovation Council. Syncona will have a 23.0% stake in the business.
iOnctura’s lead candidate is roginolisib which targets PI3K delta (PI3Kδ), which has potential application across a variety of solid tumour and haematological cancers. PI3Ks are enzymes that help to control growth in cells and are commonly involved in cancer. The biopharma industry has long tried to harness this mechanism for the treatment of cancer but previous generations of PI3K inhibitors have often targeted many PI3K sub-types and, as a result, have high toxicity.Roginolisib has the potential to become the first successful, clinically meaningful therapy to target this critical cancer mechanism.
Roginolisib demonstrated long-term safety and emerging efficacy in a Phase Ib clinical trial for metastatic uveal melanoma (UM), a rare cancer of the eye where patients have very limited treatment options. In 2024 iOnctura expects to initiate randomised Phase II trials in UM, and other cancer indications including non-small cell lung cancer and primary myelofibrosis. Syncona is working with the company to explore the breadth of roginolisib’s potential utility. iOnctura is led by a highly accomplished management team including founder and chief executive officer Catherine Pickering.
Schroder Capital Global Innovation (INOV) already had a stake in iOnctura. It invested £1.4m in this funding round, doubling its investment.
Yellowstone
Yellowstone is a new biologics company pioneering soluble bispecific TCR-based therapies to unlock a new class of cancer therapeutics. Syncona has launched the company with a £16.5m Series A commitment and will hold a 60.9% stake in the business. Through privileged access to a biobank of adult acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) patients that underwent allogeneic blood cell transplantation, Yellowstone has been able to identify a proprietary set of frequently expressed peptide antigens that represent novel biological targets to treat cancer. By targeting these specific, frequently expressed antigens, the TCR-based therapies Yellowstone will now develop have the potential to selectively kill cancer cells and, in doing so, change the treatment landscape for patients with AML and beyond, across a range of cancers.
Yellowstone has been spun out from the University of Oxford with the support of Oxford University Innovation (OUI) and is built around the pioneering work of renowned academic clinician, Prof. Paresh Vyas, who joins the company as Chief Scientific Officer alongside an industry-leading team. Neil Johnston also joins as executive chair, having spent 17 years at Novartis, most recently as global head of business development and licensing.
SYNC : Syncona backs two new cancer companies