SAN DIEGO – Local biotech startup Capstan Therapeutics has secured $175 million following the successful closing of an oversubscribed Series B financing, allowing the company to advance its leading autoimmune drug candidate to early clinical proof-of-concept. The funds will also fuel Capstan’s pipeline as it continues progressing its innovative so-called in vivo (inside the body) CAR T therapy which orchestrates white blood cells to fight invaders.
President & CEO
Capstan Therapeutics
“We are grateful for the support of both new and existing investors as we enter a critical phase of execution, with the ultimate goal of bringing transformative treatments to patients with less complexity, greater accessibility and reduced cost,” Capstan President and CEO Laura Shawver, PhD shared with the Business Journal.
The round was led by RA Capital Management, with participation from new investors Forbion, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Mubadala Capital, Perceptive Advisors, and Sofinnova Investments. The company’s existing investors – Alexandria Venture Investments, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Company, Leaps by Bayer, Novartis Venture Fund, OrbiMed, Pfizer Ventures, Polaris Partners, and Vida Ventures – also participated.
“This Series B financing brings together an exceptional syndicate of investors that recognize not only the transformative impact conventional CAR-T has had in treating cancer and autoimmune disorders like systemic lupus erythematosus, but the potential of our in vivo CAR-T approach to bring this to a broader set of patients without the need for harsh pre-conditioning regimens required by conventional CAR-T and without the risk of T cell lymphoma,” added Dr. Shawver.
In total, Capstan has raised $340M in venture capital.
The company’s leading candidate – CPTX2309 – is built off the basic idea that we can engineer cells in the body in order to treat disease. Capstan says its medicines have two main components. First, the mRNA – or instructions – that tell a cell how to fight disease. Second, a vehicle that delivers those instructions to a specific, disease-relevant cell type in the body, known as a targeted lipid nanoparticle. Dr. Shawver added, “CPTX2309, for example, instructs a patient’s killer T cells to recognize and eradicate B cells that are causing autoimmune disorders.”
The company has not yet disclosed which disorders it will target, but options include lupus, scleroderma, myositis and myasthenia gravis.
Differentiated Approach to Immunotherapy
Capstan is included in a burgeoning sector of startups – like Philadelphia-based Interius BioTherapeutics and Boston-based Ensoma – that are looking to modify the body’s immune cells.
“Important differentiators of Capstan’s approach are that we do not use a virus to deliver our medicines and our medicines are created in vivo, or inside the body, as opposed to engineering cells outside of the body and transfusing whole cells back into a patient,” she added. “These differentiators give us advantages including potentially safer, redosable and tunable therapies with scalable manufacturing and the potential for patients to be treated in an out-patient setting.”
Dr. Shawver – a cancer survivor herself – was just recognized this month as the 2024 Duane Roth Endowed Award Lecture recipient at 20th Annual Industry/Academia Precision Oncology Symposium in La Jolla, presented by Mayor Todd Gloria.
This January, the company appointed industry vet Ramin Farzaneh-Far, MD as CMO.
“There is considerable unmet need in autoimmune disorders,” he said.
“Right now, most patients require frequent oral or injectible medicines to manage or slow the progression of their disease while some have no approved treatment options at all. CAR T therapy is emerging as a potentially curative option for patients, and we have seen exciting early data in a small number of severe and refractory patients…Our aim is to provide a scalable, off-the-shelf, non-viral drug product that is capable of engineering immune cells in the body without chemotherapy pre-conditioning that could be positioned broadly as an upfront treatment for hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of autoimmune patients worldwide.”
Chief Medical Officer
Capstan Therapeutics
In 2021, the company was born out of the research of a dream team of world-renowned mRNA and cell therapy scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, including the work of Nobel Prize-winner and founder Drew Weissman, MD, PhD who pioneered mRNA research that led to the development of the COVID-19 vaccines. Other founders include Carl June, MD and Bruce Levine PhD, who broke barriers in the development of the first FDA-approved CAR-T therapy, along with Jonathan Epstein, MD, Haig Aghajanian, PhD, Hamideh Parhiz, PharmD, PhD, Ellen Puré, PhD and Steven Albelda, MD.
Built on an exceptionally strong foundation, Dr. Shawver said the company is well positioned for what lies on the horizon. “Our team is laser-focused on execution, and the Series B enables us to advance our lead product candidate, CPTX2309, to early clinical proof of concept.”
Capstan Therapeutics
FOUNDED: 2021
PRESIDENT & CEO: Laura Shawver, PhD
HEADQUARTERS: La Jolla
EMPLOYEES: 79
BUSINESS: biotech
VC RAISED: $340M
WEBSITE: capstantx.com
NOTABLE: Capstan CEO Dr. Laura Shawver received the Duane Roth Achievement Award in March, which honors patient-focused leaders in health care whose work has overcome numerous scientific, financial, institutional political and cultural obstacles to create new paradigms in research and treatment.
