Juno Therapeutics, a Seattle, WA-based developer of immunotherapies for cancer, raised $25m in funding.
Backers included Bezos Expeditions and Venrock.
The company, which has now raised more than $145m, intends to use the funds to accelerate its growth.
In conjunction with the funding, Juno added Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Ph.D. (President of The Rockefeller University in New York City), Anthony B. Evnin, Ph.D. (a Partner of Venrock), and Howard H. Pien (former CEO of Medarex Inc.) to its Board of Directors. José Baselga, M.D., Ph.D. will serve as chairman of the company’s Clinical Advisory Board.
Launched in December 2013 by The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Fred Hutch) and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), along with pediatric partner Seattle Children’s Research Institute with an initial investment of $120m (read here), Juno is advancing a pipeline of potential curative immunotherapy treatments. It does it by developing two distinct and complementary platforms – chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) and T-cell receptors (TCRs). The CAR technology is designed to target cell surface antigens that are expressed on cancer cells while the TCR technology can detect alterations in intracellular proteins present in tumor cells.
The company is led by CEO Hans Bishop.
FinSMEs
14/01/2014