No­bel lau­re­ate David Bal­ti­more throws his weight be­hind I/O start­up look­ing to craft off-the-shelf CAR ther­a­pies

In the in­su­lar world of biotech, names mat­ter — and no names shine brighter than those lu­mi­nar­ies with a No­bel Prize on their record. Now, a Los An­ge­les start­up work­ing at the fur­thest fron­tiers of cell ther­a­peu­tics is stand­ing on the shoul­ders of a lau­re­ate of its own and look­ing to rewrite the fight against sol­id tu­mors.

On Tues­day, Ap­pia Bio launched with $52 mil­lion in Se­ries A fi­nanc­ing led by 8VC and a plat­form fo­cused on what are called in­vari­ant nat­ur­al killer T cells (iNKT), an ex­treme­ly rare im­mune cell the biotech hopes to reengi­neer to bust ma­lig­nant tu­mors through a “best of both worlds” at­tack plan, the com­pa­ny said.

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