Thym­mune Ther­a­peu­tics is go­ing af­ter “the most im­por­tant or­gan you’ve nev­er heard of,” ac­cord­ing to Pil­lar VC’s Thomas de Vlaam.

Thomas de Vlaam

The Cam­bridge, MA-based biotech has raised $7 mil­lion in seed fund­ing to push its thymic cell ther­a­py through pre­clin­i­cal stud­ies, it an­nounced Wednes­day. Thym­mune was found­ed in 2019 by famed Har­vard ge­neti­cist George Church’s lab alum­ni Stan Wang, who is al­so the biotech’s CEO.

Its seed round was led by Pil­lar VC, a firm that specif­i­cal­ly in­vests in founder-led biotechs, fol­lowed by New York Blood Cen­ter and oth­er biotech no­ta­bles like Mark Bam­forth, James Fordyce, Phil Reil­ly, Judy Pagli­u­ca, John Maraganore and Church.

Reil­ly, who was the first CMO at blue­bird bio and co-found­ed Voy­ager Ther­a­peu­tics, is al­so on the com­pa­ny’s board while Church serves as its sci­en­tif­ic ad­vi­sor.

George Church

Thym­mune spent its first few years trans­lat­ing Wang’s post­doc work in­to a plat­form. The biotech is com­bin­ing ma­chine learn­ing with in­duced stem cell en­gi­neer­ing. With the plat­form, the com­pa­ny wants to de­vel­op an off-the-shelf thymic cell ther­a­py. It first hopes to tack­le con­gen­i­tal athymia, in which ba­bies are born with­out a thy­mus. Wang said Thym­mune is aim­ing for an IND by 2025.

The thy­mus is a tiny or­gan in the cen­ter of the chest that helps train T cells to fight for­eign anti­gens.

Cur­rent­ly, ba­bies with athymia get a thy­mus im­plant from an­oth­er child, where their thymic tis­sue is har­vest­ed dur­ing their open heart surgery, cul­tured, and then graft­ed in­to the ba­by with athymia.

“It’s not a scal­able ap­proach,” Wang not­ed. “That’s where we come in with this plat­form to not on­ly mass pro­duce these cells for those ini­tial im­mune de­fi­cien­cies, but al­so all the oth­er ap­pli­ca­tions we can have over time for the tech­nol­o­gy across the spec­trum of im­munol­o­gy.”

Wang en­vi­sions the ther­a­py can be used for pa­tients who get ra­di­a­tion, chemo or a thymec­to­my who might not have func­tion­ing thy­mus­es. Even fur­ther down the road, he hopes Thym­mune can tack­le ag­ing, since peo­ple nat­u­ral­ly lose their thymic func­tion over time, mak­ing them more sus­cep­ti­ble to in­fec­tions.

“We’re imag­in­ing a fu­ture where once we all turn say 50, 60, 70, we can get a dose of these thymic cells in in our mus­cles — say in our thigh — and it gives us pret­ty much a new func­tion­ing thy­mus, and we’re able to re­ju­ve­nate our im­mune func­tion to give bet­ter re­spons­es against can­cer, vac­cines, pathogens, etc.,” Wang said. “So that’s a fas­ci­nat­ing long-term vi­sion we’re build­ing to­wards, but it’s go­ing to take time and even more cap­i­tal to­wards that end.”

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

The government of the United Kingdom is giving out grants to several manufacturers that have a presence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The government announced that four companies, including Ipsen, contract manufacturer Pharmaron, DNA manufacturer Touchlight and diagnostic test producer Randox, will receive a total of £277 million ($341.1 million). According to a release from the UK government, this represents the first portion of grants from the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund.

A company with public links to Sanofi and Moderna has raised more money to expand its mission of improving diversity and enrollment in clinical trials.

Inato put the word out on Wednesday that it raised $20 million via an A2 round to advance its matching platform between pharma companies and potential clinical trial sites.

Inato CEO Kourosh Davarpanah told Endpoints News that with the $20 million in hand, it will pursue improvements to its diversity offerings, its focus on oncology and data collection.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”