Amgen vet Patrick Baeuerle inspires a $45M round from A-list VCs for a next-gen I/O drug platform
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.
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