What if re­searchers could take the an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate mod­el and ap­ply it to off-the-shelf NK cell ther­a­py? For the Tai­wan-based biotech Ace­po­dia, that’s the $47 mil­lion ques­tion.

Ace­po­dia closed its Se­ries B round Tues­day morn­ing, hop­ing to build up­on CEO Son­ny Hsiao’s work from when he was a bi­ol­o­gist at UC Berke­ley. The biotech plans to use the funds to ad­vance its lead pro­gram through the end of a Phase I tri­al and launch a Phase II study, as well as to get two oth­er can­di­dates in­to the clin­ic.

Fol­low­ing a $10 mil­lion Se­ries A, Ace­po­dia has now raised $57 mil­lion to date.

The biotech’s core tech­nol­o­gy comes from Hsiao’s lab re­search at Berke­ley, where he dis­cov­ered a way to con­ju­gate an­ti­bod­ies with NK cells in a sim­i­lar fash­ion to the ADC ap­proach with small mol­e­cule or check­point in­hibitors. And as if tak­ing a cue from that mod­el, Ace­po­dia calls its plat­form “an­ti­body cell con­ju­ga­tion,” or ACC.

While most NK cell ther­a­pies are al­ready ad­min­is­tered in con­junc­tion with an­ti­bod­ies, Hsiao says Ace­po­dia’s tech al­lows for a more tar­get­ed treat­ment. Nor­mal­ly, the an­ti­bod­ies and NK cells are ad­min­is­tered sep­a­rate­ly, mak­ing for less po­tent ef­fi­ca­cy, Hsiao told End­points News.

But by con­ju­gat­ing the two, the can­cer-tar­get­ing an­ti­bod­ies are less like­ly to dif­fuse through­out the body. Hsiao likened the an­ti­bod­ies used in his plat­form to track­ing de­vices, hunt­ing down tu­mor cells as they evade the body’s nat­ur­al de­fens­es.

“We can put hun­dreds of thou­sands of them, of these very good track­ing de­vices, on the NK cells for the NK cells to rec­og­nize and kill the tu­mor cells,” Hsiao said.

The ACCs al­so help ac­ti­vate the en­tire im­mune sys­tem to fight the tu­mor, Hsiao added, as con­ju­gat­ing the NK cells di­rect­ly pro­vides for an en­hanced im­mune re­sponse com­pared to cur­rent NK cell ther­a­pies or your typ­i­cal ADC.

Ace­po­dia’s lead pro­gram is called ACE1702, and it’s cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing a Phase I study tar­get­ing HER2-ex­press­ing sol­id tu­mors. As with any ini­tial clin­i­cal tri­al, Ace­po­dia is eval­u­at­ing the safe­ty and tol­er­a­bil­i­ty of the pro­gram and is en­rolling be­tween 12 and 24 pa­tients. The first pa­tient was dosed with ACE1702 last Au­gust, with topline da­ta ex­pect­ed at ES­MO this sum­mer.

Should the Phase I re­turn pos­i­tive re­sults when it’s fin­ished, Ace­po­dia plans to prep a Phase II for ear­ly 2022.

Hsiao high­light­ed the ver­sa­til­i­ty of the plat­form, not­ing that HER2 is ex­pressed in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent can­cer types. And the pro­grams com­ing up be­hind ACE1702 will tar­get CD20 and CD70, re­spec­tive­ly, with ini­tial in­di­ca­tions planned for a va­ri­ety of liq­uid and sol­id tu­mors, he said. Ace­po­dia ex­pects to sub­mit an IND for the CD20 can­di­date in the sec­ond half of this year.

Be­yond that, the biotech is al­ready set­ting the wheels in mo­tion to kick off its crossover round fund­ing. The Se­ries B gives Ace­po­dia enough run­way for 12 to 18 months to launch these tri­als, but fu­ture fund­ing is ex­pect­ed to help the com­pa­ny ex­pand its pipeline even fur­ther.

And af­ter that, could Ace­po­dia see it­self jump­ing to Nas­daq with an IPO? It’s “def­i­nite­ly an op­tion for us to keep in mind,” Hsiao said.

Tues­day’s round was sup­port­ed by new in­vestors Ridge­back Cap­i­tal, 8VC, and DEF­TA Part­ners, and the Tai­wan-based in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestor-CDIB Cap­i­tal Health­care. Ace­po­dia’s Se­ries A in­vestors al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the fund­ing.

In biopharma, driving a drug to market is the ultimate goal — but none of that happens without a strong research and development program. At the most successful companies, those R&D efforts are spearheaded by true innovators in the field who are always looking for that next novel mechanism of action or breakthrough safety profile.

Now, Endpoints News is asking you to tell us who those guiding lights are.

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