Roswell Park spin­out rais­es $35M from Chi­nese in­vestors to pur­sue one-two punch for adop­tive T cell ther­a­py

Amid buzzing re­ports out of ASH track­ing var­i­ous im­munother­a­pies’ suc­cess in treat­ing blood can­cers, a Buf­fa­lo-based biotech has qui­et­ly bagged its first ven­ture round to ad­vance its adop­tive T cell ther­a­py for mul­ti­ple myelo­ma in­to the clin­ic.

Tac­ti­va Ther­a­peu­tics is a spin­out of Roswell Park Com­pre­hen­sive Can­cer Cen­ter launched in 2017. Har­ness­ing a spe­cial class of CD4 T cells — which are com­mon­ly seen to be mere helpers to an­ti-tu­mor CD8 T cells — the founders de­vel­oped a way to en­gi­neer hematopoi­et­ic stem cells to ex­press both T cell re­cep­tors “in a way that has nev­er been tried be­fore” for a more long-last­ing com­bined ef­fect, ac­cord­ing to CMO Kun­le Odun­si.

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