AffyImmune CEO Moonsoo Jin (L) and COO Eric von Hofe

Tiny play­er picks up $30M to go af­ter CAR-T's biggest chal­lenges

Of all the chal­lenges as­so­ci­at­ed with reengi­neer­ing CAR-T ther­a­pies — which have been wild­ly suc­cess­ful in treat­ing cer­tain blood can­cers — to at­tack sol­id tu­mors, tox­i­c­i­ty of­ten ranks near the top.

“If there is no ther­a­peu­tic win­dow, the tri­al will be ter­mi­nat­ed,” Si­mone Song, founder and man­ag­ing part­ner at ORI Cap­i­tal, told End­points News.

It was the rea­son why ORI, a Hong Kong-based health­care VC firm fo­cused on can­cer, meta­bol­ic dis­or­ders and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases, de­cid­ed to in­cu­bate a start­up by the name of Affy­Im­mune back in 2017. And it’s why Song’s team is hand­ing over an­oth­er $30 mil­lion to fund a first-in-hu­man tri­al that kicked off late last year and send a sec­ond CAR-T ther­a­py in­to the clin­ic.

Endpoints News

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