New and existing investors have supported TCR therapy-focused TScan in an oversubscribed Series C round. The money will fund TScan for the next two years and allow it to advance its liquid and solid tumour TCR-T cell therapies into clinical trials. Massachusetts-based TScan Therapeutics has closed an oversubscribed $100m Series C round. This financing attracted both new and existing investors. New investors that participated were Black Rock and RA Capital, while existing investors include Longwood Fund, Novartis Venture Fund and 6 Dimensions Capital.

The Series C funding will support TScan in advancing its T cell receptor (TCR)-T cell therapies for cancer into clinic trials. These novel therapies are developed using TScan’s proprietary technology platform. TScan CEO David South well adds the $100m “will fund TScan into 2023, including the filing of two INDs [investigational new drug applications] for the liquid tumour program in 2021 and three INDs for the solid tumour program in 2022”. The funding will also “support generation of initial data from first-in-human studies for TScan’s liquid tumour programme”.

Exploring TScan’s oncology TCR-T therapies

TScan is the name of the target discovery technology developed by Harvard Medical School’s Steven Elledge, who now serves on the company’s advisory board. This technology “uniquely enables the identification of T cell targets in a high-throughput, comprehensive, and whole genome fashion” to support the development of TCR-T cell therapies, explains Southwell. These targets are derived from patients actively responding to immunotherapy, meaning “we uniquely know that these TCRs and their associated targets drive clinically meaningful anti-tumour responses in patients”.

TScan views TCR-T cell therapies as a promising treatment modality because “the natural interaction between T cells via TCRs and tumour cells can be harnessed to reprogram a patient’s immune system in a systematic, safe and effective way to eliminate cancer”, explains Southwell. Because “the TScan platform can be used to screen TCRs for potential off-target binding,” TScan’s TCR-T cell therapies are “highly de-risked against potential off-target toxicities observed in many [competing] current clinical-stage TCR-T programs”, Southwell says. TScan’s TCR-T cell products are also differentiated from other products in development because they are multiplex treatments where patients receive multiple TCR-T cell products. Southwell notes: “A multiplexed approach uniquely addresses current concerns with tumour antigen escape and incomplete responses observed with single-target products currently in clinical development.”

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Journal of Infectious Diseases and Diagnosis