
Hot on the heels of a positive PhIII, Immunocore hauls in $175M as it hunts its first TCR OK
Six weeks after Bahija Jallal’s crew at TCR pioneer Immunocore rolled out an upbeat presentation on their lead drug’s interim Phase III data, the biotech has scooped up an extra $175 million to back their prospective commercial launch.
Jallal, who raised $130 million last spring, has brought in a $75 million C round and added $100 million in debt for the company, bringing the total raised so far to $620 million. Immunocore got off to a hot start in 2015 with a monster $320 million launch round, a record for a UK biotech. But CEO founder Eliot Forster had a hard time keeping a grip on the valuation he started with, which ultimately triggered an overhaul in the C-suite that brought in Jallal.
Her bet on Immunocore paid off with promising pivotal data in late November, the first such event among the TCR class, which has had its share of ups and downs over the years.
At the first planned interim readout for the intent-to-treat, all-comers group in uveal melanoma for tebentafusp (IMCgp100), Immunocore’s research team nailed down an impressive hazard ratio of 0.51 against physicians’ choice SOC.
The biotech also noted:
Although not yet mature, the Kaplan-Meier estimates suggest a 1-year OS rate of approximately 73% vs 58%, respectively.
Oxford Finance provided the loan and existing investors in the syndicate preferred the C round.
Immunocore is rare among biotechs with a late-stage asset looking for a regulatory approval. Most companies would have already filed for an IPO by now. Jallal has yet to pull that trigger, but that may well change in the not-so-distant future.