US-based immunotherapy developer Repertoire Immune Medicines closed a $189m series B round yesterday that included telecommunications and internet group Softbank’s Vision Fund 2.
Venture capital firm and founding Repertoire investor Flagship Pioneering also took part in the round, as did Public Sector Pension Investment Board, Alaska Permanent Fund and Invus.
Repertoire is developing T cell therapies to treat cancer, autoimmune disorders and infectious diseases using its Decode and Deploy technologies, which help it characterise T cell receptor-antigen pairs in depth.
The company was formed through the December 2019 merger of Torque Therapeutics and Cogen Immune Medicine, which had reportedly raised a combined $220m at that point, Torque having secured $25m from Flagship Pioneering in 2017.
Venture philanthropy fund JDRF T1D Fund had supplied an undisclosed amount of funding for Repertoire in March 2020 when the merger agreement was formally announced.
John Cox, Repertoire’s CEO, said: “We are making tremendous progress toward unlocking the full potential of therapeutically modulating the immune system by decoding the interactions between T cells and antigens to create new classes of immune medicines for cancer, immune disorders, infectious diseases and other serious diseases.
“This financing round will support the broad application of our Decode platform to define and understand the complete repertoire of T cell receptor-antigen pairs that drive cellular immunity. The insights we glean from this information will enable a new era of novel immune medicines designed to exploit these critical interactions.”
