Jasper Therapeutics, a US-based stem cell transplant conditioning agent developer, launched on Friday with $35m in a series A round featuring Alexandria Venture Investments, part of life sciences real estate investment trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
Venture capital firms Qiming Venture Partners USA and Abingworth co-led the round, which included Surveyor Capital,a subsidiary of asset management group Citadel.
Jasper is working on antibodies intended to act as conditioning agents to protect the body ahead of haematopoietic cell transplants, which are transfusions of stem cells that transform into any blood cell subtype to treat certain forms of cancer and autoimmune diseases.
The company’s lead candidate, JSP191, was licensed from pharmaceutical company Amgen. It is currently undergoing phase 1 clinical trials in patients who have previously failed stem cell transplants for severe combined immunodeficiency, a rare genetic disorder that arrests immune system function.
The series A cash will fund JSP191’s clinical development, including further trials of the asset in patients with haematological cancers.
The agent’s scope could also be expanded to cover patients receiving stem cell-driven gene therapies, as well as those awaiting transplants for acute myeloid leukaemia, myelodysplastic syndrome or autoimmune diseases.
JSP191 was discovered by Amgen, which licensed the drug to Jasper alongside translational science and materials originating from Stanford University.
Kurt von Emster, managing partner of Abingworth, and Anna French, principal at Qiming Venture Partners, joined the company’s board of directors in connection with the series A round.
The original version of this article appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing.