The oner­ous process of mak­ing a per­son­al­ized CAR-T — one that in­volves ex­tract­ing cells from pa­tients, en­gi­neer­ing and then in­ject­ing them back — is one of the defin­ing fea­tures of the first gen­er­a­tion of en­gi­neered cell ther­a­pies. It’s part­ly why the treat­ments are so ex­pen­sive; it’s al­so an in­spi­ra­tion for new al­lo­gene­ic ap­proach­es that promise to be faster and cheap­er.

But a biotech start­up in Seat­tle wants to go fur­ther.

Umo­ja Bio­phar­ma is start­ing out with $53 mil­lion in Se­ries A cash to test whether a lentivi­ral vec­tor de­liv­ered di­rect­ly in vi­vo can gen­er­ate a pop­u­la­tion of T cells that ex­pand and fight can­cer just as well as the ex­ter­nal­ly man­u­fac­tured ones do.

“So we don’t ac­tu­al­ly have to man­u­fac­ture the cells,” co-founder and CEO Andy Scharen­berg told End­points News. “We’re gonna be ef­fec­tive­ly mak­ing a com­plex bi­o­log­ic.”

Scharen­berg, who’s ex­plored mul­ti­ple ways to do gene trans­fer through the years at places like Cel­lec­tis and Gen­er­a­tion Bio, high­light­ed the “in­cred­i­ble safe­ty record” of lentivi­ral vec­tors and their abil­i­ty to not just trans­duce but al­so in­te­grate the ge­nom­ic pay­load in­to daugh­ter cells. Be­cause the re­sult­ing CAR-T would ex­pand in a way that repli­cates a nat­ur­al im­mune re­sponse, he al­so fore­sees few of the side ef­fects, such as cy­tokine re­lease syn­drome, that pa­tients ex­pe­ri­ence with Kym­ri­ah and Yescar­ta.

A sec­ond tech­nol­o­gy uti­lizes small mol­e­cules to con­trol and tune these self-gen­er­at­ed CAR-T cells fol­low­ing a sin­gle ad­min­is­tra­tion. And Umo­ja has lined up an ad­di­tion­al tech plat­form to push it in­to sol­id tu­mors by tag­ging can­cer cells for recog­ni­tion by T cells.

Bring­ing all three ap­proach­es and the re­spec­tive ex­perts un­der the same roof is a key idea be­hind Umo­ja — a Swahili word for “uni­ty.”

“In many ways the sci­en­tif­ic con­cept un­der­ly­ing the com­pa­ny is a lit­tle bit sum­ma­rized in that word,” Scharen­berg said. “In or­der to have a re­al­ly im­pact­ful ap­proach to ad­vanc­ing im­munother­a­pies, you need to in­te­grate mul­ti­ple tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms.”

Philip Low

With Michael Jensen of Seat­tle Chil­dren’s and Philip Low of Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty on board as co-founders, Umo­ja plans to pur­sue par­al­lel de­vel­op­ment paths for the in vi­vo gene de­liv­ery and tu­mor tag tech­nolo­gies, which the CEO de­scribes as two sides of the same coin. Jensen will lead a col­lab­o­ra­tion to eval­u­ate the tu­mor tag ap­proach among chil­dren with os­teosar­co­ma in the com­ing year. Mean­while, Umo­ja will get ready to put its ini­tial CAR-T hit­ting a fa­mil­iar tar­get — CD19 — in the clin­ic.

If “things go re­al­ly well,” Scharen­berg sees the com­pa­ny stack­ing the two ap­proach­es for a more po­tent ef­fect in the 2023, 2024 time frame.

MPM Cap­i­tal and DCVC Bio seed­ed the com­pa­ny, with Qim­ing Ven­ture Part­ners USA join­ing to co-lead the Se­ries A.

As cel­lu­lar im­munother­a­pies grad­u­al­ly move from their cur­rent ap­pli­ca­tions to­ward the front­line — some­thing Scharen­berg en­vi­sions — he sees the scale and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty be­ing his com­pa­ny’s key mantra.

“When we think about what Umo­ja as­pires to be as an or­ga­ni­za­tion, it’s not on­ly to ad­vance and make im­munother­a­pies that are more ef­fec­tive against all tu­mors,” he said, “but al­so to make them ac­ces­si­ble and to al­le­vi­ate some of the eco­nom­ic tox­i­c­i­ties that are as­so­ci­at­ed with the cost of some of the cur­rent ther­a­pies as well.”

The first time San Diego biotech Ambrx tried to go public in 2014, they failed and the company’s board switched to a radically different strategy: They sold themselves for an undisclosed amount to a syndicate of Chinese investors and pharma companies.

Now, after 5 quiet years, that syndicate has raised a mountain of cash and indicated they’ll soon make another bid to go public.

Earlier this month, Ambrx raised $200 million in what they billed as a crossover round financed by Fidelity, BlackRock, Cormorant Asset Management, HBM Healthcare Investments, Invus, Adage Capital Partners and Suvretta Capital Management. It’s the largest amount they’ve ever raised and, according to Crunchbase figures, more than doubles the total amount of VC capital collected since their launch 17 years ago.

As biotechs look to get clinical studies back on track amid the pandemic, Medable returned to the venture well for the second time this year, bagging a $91 million Series C to build out its virtual trial platform.

The software provider recently launched three new apps for decentralizing clinical trials, and saw a 500% revenue spike this year. And it isn’t alone. Back in August, Science 37 secured a $40 million round for its virtual trial tech, with support from Novartis, Sanofi Ventures and Amgen. Patients and researchers are taking a liking to the online approach, suggesting regulators could allow it to become a new normal even after the pandemic is over.

Catamaran Bio’s founding members decided to jump into the CAR-NK game last December over drinks at a trendy bar in Boston.

They were sitting around a table, discussing an MD Anderson study which provided some of the first clinical proof that natural killer (NK) cells can be reengineered to attack tumors, much like CAR-T therapies. It was a “long and lively” discussion, COO Mark Boshar recalls. And by the time it was over, they had a starting point to launch a company.