ArsenalBio secures $325M for solid tumor CAR-T research with Regeneron and BMS

Arsenal Biosciences, a cell therapy biotech company, has announced a substantial financial boost, raising $325 million in its latest funding round. This Series C fundraising effort has attracted significant backers, including Regeneron Ventures, Arch Venture Partners, and NVIDIA’s NVentures. Despite the challenging investment environment, CEO and co-founder Ken Drazan, M.D., conveyed the complexity and effort required to secure this level of funding. He emphasized that no one could claim the process was easy, especially in the current market conditions.

The new capital will primarily focus on advancing ArsenalBio’s clinical programs, specifically targeting kidney and prostate cancers. The company has opted to deprioritize its former lead asset, AB-1015, a CAR T-cell therapy for ovarian cancer currently in a phase 1 trial. Drazan explained that the company must make deliberate choices on resource allocation due to limited capital. As a result, they aim to heavily invest in their kidney and prostate cancer programs while potentially revisiting the ovarian cancer program when more resources become available.

Drazan elaborated on the company’s strategic pivot, noting the evolution of their technology. The initial ovarian cancer drug was based on their first-generation technology, whereas their kidney cancer program incorporates more advanced technology. This progression continued into their prostate cancer program, making these newer assets more likely to achieve their goal of eradicating metastatic cancer.

One of ArsenalBio’s standout projects is AB-2100, a kidney cancer candidate that recently entered a phase 1/2 trial targeting clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). This therapy utilizes their proprietary CITE (CRISPR Integration of Transgenes by Electroporation) technology to engineer T cells to selectively target tumors, aiming to enable the patient’s immune system to destroy cancer cells without harming normal tissues. The company plans to share more information about this program by late November.

ArsenalBio differentiates itself by focusing exclusively on solid tumors and addressing specific challenges within the cell therapy field. They have identified a “safe-harbor” locus on chromosome 11, which Drazan likened to having the best housing site on a cul-de-sac. Beyond location, the company aims to build the most comprehensive biological approach to treating solid tumors by incorporating multiple features into a single product. This involves using CRISPR CAS9 to insert a large piece of programming DNA, enabling up to seven different functional events to occur.

The biotech’s toolkit, developed to tackle issues such as T-cell exhaustion, tumor specificity, and genome toxicity, sets ArsenalBio apart. This toolkit allows the company to innovate continually, a challenging feat for those without such capabilities from the outset.

In September 2022, ArsenalBio raised $220 million in Series B funding with support from investors like Bristol Myers Squibb, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, among others. These investors have again rallied for the Series C round. Drazan mentioned that the investor mix includes traditional life science investors, crossover investors, strategic pharmaceutical investors, and technology investors. While technology investors are not necessarily there to fund drug development, their presence hints at a unique value proposition within ArsenalBio’s approach.

Currently, ArsenalBio is concentrating on achieving proof-of-concept data for its kidney and prostate cancer treatments and advancing its technology platform. The company also maintains partnerships with Bristol Myers Squibb and Roche’s Genentech, which invested $70 million each for multi-year discovery collaborations using ArsenalBio’s screening and T-cell engineering tools.

With a growing team of 265 employees, ArsenalBio continues to develop innovative products aimed at potentially curing solid tumors. The company’s mission is to replicate the success of CAR-T therapies in blood cancers to solid tumors, and they are making significant strides in this ambitious goal.

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