MPM found­ed Har­poon Ther­a­peu­tics and seed­ed its ear­ly work look­ing to make the leap in­to next-gen im­muno-on­col­o­gy drugs with some in­sights from one of the pi­o­neers in the field. Now it has put to­geth­er a glob­al syn­di­cate of some A-list ven­ture in­vestors to back a $45 mil­lion B round to move their lead drug in­to the clin­ic next year.

Har­poon was in­spired by Patrick Baeuer­le, who led the de­vel­op­ment work on Mi­cromet BiTE plat­form, which used an an­ti­body to redi­rect killer T cells to de­stroy tu­mor cells. Am­gen went on to ac­quire Mi­cromet in 2012, back when Roger Perl­mut­ter was run­ning R&D and fell in love with the work. Perl­mut­ter, now run­ning R&D at Mer­ck, brought Baeuer­le on board at Am­gen to con­tin­ue work on Blin­cy­to, which was ap­proved in late 2014 as the first bis­pe­cif­ic CD19-di­rect­ed CD3 T-cell en­gager.

The sci­en­tist then left for MPM, bring­ing along some ideas on how next-wave drugs could go much, much fur­ther.

The big idea now, to be test­ed with HPN424 for prostate can­cer, is built around a new plat­form dubbed Tri­TAC, for tri-spe­cif­ic T-cell ac­ti­vat­ing drugs. Done prop­er­ly, the biotech be­lieves it has a bet­ter way “to un­leash the tar­get­ed cell-killing prop­er­ties of a pa­tient’s own im­mune sys­tem through T-cell ac­ti­va­tion.” That’s a big goal, and done prop­er­ly the biotech be­lieves it will pen­e­trate tis­sue bet­ter and ex­tend serum ex­po­sure, with ap­pli­ca­tions in can­cer as well as im­munol­o­gy.

“We’re giv­ing an an­ti­body-type mol­e­cule, not an an­ti­body per se, and we give that to pa­tients,” says Har­poon CEO Jer­ry McMa­hon, had been CEO at Koll­tan un­til Celldex bought it out last year. “The mol­e­cule will cre­ate a bridge be­tween the tu­mor cells and the T cells, and that bridge – or synapse – al­lows the T cell to kill the tu­mor cell.”

McMa­hon sees this as a third class of I/O drug, fol­low­ing check­point in­hibitors and CAR-T, ad­van­taged by their abil­i­ty to be able to ad­just dosage and reg­i­men.

The lat­est round brings the to­tal amount raised so far to $60 mil­lion, with enough cash to get at least through the next two years, with plans to dou­ble the cur­rent 15-mem­ber staff by the end of next year. In ad­di­tion to its prostate can­cer drug, McMa­hon adds that the biotech al­so has an­oth­er ther­a­py be­ing prepped for hu­man stud­ies that tar­gets lung, ovar­i­an and pan­cre­at­ic can­cer.

Har­poon, found­ed in 2015, spun one of its oth­er plat­forms us­ing the tu­mor mi­croen­vi­ron­ment to ac­ti­vate T cells in­to a sep­a­rate biotech called Mav­er­ick, which at­tract­ed a $125 mil­lion in­vest­ment last Jan­u­ary tied to an op­tion to ac­quire it.

Baeuer­le has been busy of late, boot­ing up new com­pa­nies. He and MPM al­so found­ed TCR2 Ther­a­peu­tics, an­oth­er im­muno-on­col­o­gy com­pa­ny that hopes to pi­o­neer a new class of T cell ther­a­pies that re­pro­grams the nat­ur­al T cell re­cep­tor com­plex to rec­og­nize spe­cif­ic anti­gens found on tu­mors, rapid­ly killing can­cer cells.

Lon­don-based Ar­ix Bio­science and New Leaf Ven­ture Part­ners co-led the lat­est round, with help from MPM Cap­i­tal and Tai­ho Ven­tures, an­oth­er new in­vestor.

“Har­poon Ther­a­peu­tics has a nov­el, T-cell en­gager plat­form which we be­lieve will be in­stru­men­tal to the dis­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment of im­por­tant new ther­a­peu­tics in on­col­o­gy,” said Mark Chin, in­vest­ment man­ag­er at Ar­ix Bio­science. “Cou­pled with its sci­en­tif­ic ex­per­tise and strong man­age­ment team, Har­poon is well-po­si­tioned to play a lead­ing role in the im­muno-on­col­o­gy field.”

Dupixent, the blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug from Sanofi and Regeneron, has cleared a high-stakes Phase III study in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the companies announced Thursday morning.

If they hold up in a second, identical trial, the data pave the way for Dupixent to become the first biologic to treat patients whose COPD remains uncontrolled despite being on maximal standard-of-care inhaled therapy — the patient population studied in the pivotal program. The companies had spotlighted this as a key readout as they look to expand the Dupixent franchise and explore its full potential.