PACT Phar­ma bags $75M for neoanti­gen TCR work, man­u­fac­tur­ing; Bay­er grabs ex­per­i­men­tal con­tra­cep­tive from Daré

→ With a new pres­i­dent and chief tech­ni­cal of­fi­cer in place, next-gen T cell ther­a­py play­er PACT Phar­ma has $75 mil­lion in fresh fi­nanc­ing to ex­pand the scope of its nascent clin­i­cal pro­grams and open its own man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in South San Fran­cis­co. By iso­lat­ing spe­cif­ic neoanti­gen re­cep­tors in pa­tients that ap­pear to be dri­ving an im­mune re­sponse, PACT promis­es to tack­le some of the tough­est sol­id tu­mors pre­vi­ous­ly im­pen­e­tra­ble to cell ther­a­pies. Vi­da Ven­tures, which has close ties to promi­nent cell ther­a­py biotechs such as Kite and Al­lo­gene, led the Se­ries C round. CTO Tim Moore, who jumped from Kite last Oc­to­ber, will su­per­vise ef­forts to au­to­mate some pro­duc­tion and an­a­lyt­ics process “to re­duce cy­cle time and man­u­fac­tur­ing costs.”

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