Thymic Aplasia

Stan Wang, M.D., Ph.D., founder and CEO, Thymmune Therapeutics/company courtesy Famed geneticist George Church has spun out another company – this one developing cell therapies that regenerate the thymus, thereby restoring and improving immune function. Thymmune Therapeutics debuted Wednesday with $7 million in seed financing. The Mass.-based start-up is backed by Boston-based venture capital firm Pillar VC, which led the financing round. Several other institutional and personal investors participated, including the New York Blood Center’s NYBC Ventures, former Alnylam CEO John Maraganore and Church. Founded in 2019, Thymmune is built on decades of research on the thymus gland, Stan Wang, M.D., Ph.D., founder and CEO, said in a statement. Wang was a member of Church’s lab at the Harvard Medical School from 2016 to 2018. Joining Wang at Thymmune’s masthead is chief scientific officer Bing Lim, M.D., Ph.D., who has held leadership positions at Sana Biotechnology, Merck and Singapore’s A*STAR. The start-up has six other employees fulfilling various scientific research functions. In 2021, Thymmune established its base of operations in Kendall Square in Cambridge. The same year, it won five Golden Tickets – a record in the Boston area – from big sponsors: Pfizer, Novo Nordisk, LG Chem Life Sciences, Boehringer Ingelheim and Astellas. Tickets are awarded to promising early-stage life-sciences start-ups. Targeting the Thymus The thymus gland is a small organ tucked beneath the breastbone. Its primary function is to produce T cells, which help the body ward off infections and diseases and mount an immune response to vaccines. The thymus grows weaker with age and is less capable of producing naïve T cells, leading to immune dysfunction and various chronic conditions. Thymmune aims to reverse this process by combining machine learning with cellular engineering to mass produce thymic cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells. With this approach, the start-up intends to create off-the-shelf cell therapies that can restore immune function minimally invasively. “Our approach has the potential to transform immunology by developing novel therapies for patients with a range of immune system disorders,” Wang said in a prepared statement. The small team will first test their platform against athymia, a rare and congenital immune disorder wherein an infant is born without a thymus. Babies with athymia cannot produce T cells and are at a high risk of infection. Left untreated, athymic infants typically die by age two or three. In the future, Thomas de Vlaam, Principal, Pillar VC, said Thymmune’s platform could also boost immune function and address the biology of aging. Thymmune joins the cadre of biotech start-ups that have spun out from Church’s lab at Harvard. This includes de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences, protein barcoding start-up Manifold Bio and aging-focused firm Rejuvenate Bio.

Thymmune Therapeutics is going after “the most important organ you’ve never heard of,” according to Pillar VC’s Thomas de Vlaam. The Cambridge, MA-based biotech has raised $7 million in seed funding to push its thymic cell therapy through preclinical studies, it announced Wednesday. Thymmune was founded in 2019 by famed Harvard geneticist George Church’s lab alumni Stan Wang, who is also the biotech’s CEO. Its seed round was led by Pillar VC, a firm that specifically invests in founder-led biotechs, followed by New York Blood Center and other biotech notables like Mark Bamforth, James Fordyce, Phil Reilly, July Pagliuca, John Maraganore and Church. Reilly, who was the first CMO at bluebird bio and co-founded Voyager Therapeutics, is also on the company’s board while Church serves as its scientific advisor. Thymmune spent its first few years translating Wang’s postdoc work into a platform. The biotech is combining machine learning with induced stem cell engineering. With the platform, the company wants to develop an off-the-shelf thymic cell therapy. It first hopes to tackle congenital athymia, in which babies are born without a thymus. Wang said Thymmune is aiming for an IND by 2025. The thymus is a tiny organ in the center of the chest that helps train T cells to fight foreign antigens. Currently, babies with athymia get a thymus implant from another child, where their thymic tissue is harvested during their open heart surgery, cultured, and then grafted into the baby with athymia. “It’s not a scalable approach,” Wang noted. “That’s where we come in with this platform to not only mass produce these cells for those initial immune deficiencies, but also all the other applications we can have over time for the technology across the spectrum of immunology.” Wang envisions the therapy can be used for patients who get radiation, chemo or a thymectomy who might not have functioning thymuses. Even further down the road, he hopes Thymmune can tackle aging, since people naturally lose their thymic function over time, making them more susceptible to infections. “We’re imagining a future where once we all turn say 50, 60, 70, we can get a dose of these thymic cells in in our muscles — say in our thigh — and it gives us pretty much a new functioning thymus, and we’re able to rejuvenate our immune function to give better responses against cancer, vaccines, pathogens, etc,” Wang said. “So that’s a fascinating long term vision we’re building towards, but it’s going to take time and even more capital towards that end.”

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Thymmune Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing scalable thymic cell therapies to restore immune function in aging and disease, announced today that it has secured $7 million in seed financing led by Pillar VC, with participation from NYBC Ventures and other investors. Its investor base includes industry pioneers Mark Bamforth, Founder of Brammer Bio and Arranta Bio, James Fordyce, John Maraganore, Ph.D., Former Founding CEO at Alnylam, Judy Pagliuca at PagsGroup, and Philip Reilly, M.D., J.D., along with George Church, Ph.D., who is a scientific advisor to the company. The financing will be used to advance Thymmune’s lead product THY-100 into preclinical studies in immune system disorders caused by thymic deficiencies (such as children born without a thymus), which result in a lack of functional T cells. The funding will also be used to develop its thymic cell engineering platform and expand into additional indications across areas of unmet clinical need in immunology. The thymus is a critical organ in the immune system that regulates and develops T cells, which are essential for fighting infection and disease, along with mounting effective responses to vaccines. As part of the natural aging process, the functional thymus begins to shrink and its ability to produce naïve T cells decreases, leading to immune dysfunction and disease. “Thymmune’s approach to mass-produce iPSC-derived thymic cells to restore immune function in patients is a breakthrough for the field of thymic regenerative medicine. This treatment is less invasive than surgery and can be replicated at high quality at scale,” said Thomas de Vlaam, Principal, Pillar VC. “In the future, regenerating the thymus using Thymmune’s approach could improve immune function for a variety of diseases and even address the biology of aging.” “The thymus plays a crucial role in the development and function of T cells, which are a key component of the adaptive immune system. The science is only going to continue advancing rapidly as more researchers move into this area of scientific study,” said Christopher D. Hillyer, M.D., President and CEO, New York Blood Center Enterprises, and General Partner, NYBC Ventures. “Recent advances in immunology have allowed the function of the thymus in T-cell maturation to be better understood, and Thymmune is well-positioned to lead this new frontier.” "We are thrilled to have secured this funding with a top-tier syndicate of investors led by Pillar VC, which will allow us to revolutionize drug development by capitalizing on the latest advances in thymus biology, iPSCs, and machine learning," said Stan Wang, M.D., Ph.D., Founder & CEO, Thymmune. "Based on decades of research on the thymus gland, our approach has the potential to transform immunology by developing novel therapies for patients with a range of immune system disorders." Having established operations in Kendall Square in 2021, Thymmune has been awarded 5 Golden Tickets, a Boston area record, from Astellas, Boehringer Ingelheim, LG Chem Life Sciences, Novo Nordisk and Pfizer. Thymmune has also received funding via Wellcome Leap’s inaugural HOPE program, along with an NIH/NIAID Fast-Track SBIR. About Thymmune Thymmune is a biotechnology company developing a machine learning-enabled thymic cell engineering platform to restore normal immune function in aging and disease. The company's cutting-edge approach in iPSC-thymic cell manufacturing can generate off-the-shelf cells at scale. The company is developing a pipeline of therapies to treat immunodeficiencies, transplant related, and autoimmune diseases. Thymmune is based in Cambridge, MA. For more information, visit .