No­var­tis, Bay­er, Long­wood back ge­nomics start­up to speed search for im­munother­a­py tar­gets

Near­ly a cen­tu­ry passed be­tween the first pro­to-im­munother­a­py at­tempts in can­cer — crude and ob­scure but nonethe­less with some sci­en­tif­ic ba­sis — and Jim Al­li­son’s first T cell pa­per. Thir­ty-plus years flipped be­tween the dis­cov­ery of CT­LA-4 as an off-switch and the ap­proval of Yer­voy. Twen­ty-two rolled be­tween PD-1’s iso­la­tion and Op­di­va and Keytru­da. 

Long­wood co-founder Lea Hachi­gian is bet­ting she can has­ten that. It’s a bet on new­ly es­tab­lished sin­gle-cell ge­nom­ic analy­sis tech and the abil­i­ty to crunch end­less troves of da­ta at a rate few oth­ers can, and in­vestors in­clud­ing Leaps by Bay­er and No­var­tis Ven­ture Fund just put $39 mil­lion be­hind it. They call it Im­mu­ni­tas. 

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