US-based cell therapy developer Orca Bio secured $192m on Wednesday in a series D round featuring healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente’s Group Trust as well as its Kaiser Foundation Hospitals subsidiary.
Venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners co-led the round with an unnamed additional investor, while 8VC, Data Collective’s DCVC Bio unit, ND Capital, the Abu Dhabi-owned Mubadala Investment Company and Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund also took part.
Founded in 2016, Orca Bio is working on allogeneic cell therapies that will utilise its manufacturing platform to build doses of medicine cell-by-cell using donor blood, immune and stem cells.
The company is initially concentrating on two clinical programs targeted at blood cancer which are in phase 1 and phase 1/2 clinical trials respectively, but it expects to be able to transfer its technology to genetic diseases and autoimmune disorders.
Although Orca Bio has not disclosed details of its earlier funding, nor which investors in the series D round participated as new or existing backers, it said it has now raised a total of $300m in funding.
Ivan Dimov, Orca Bio’s co-founder and CEO, said: “The capital we have raised has formed the launchpad for a world-class, fully integrated allogeneic cell therapy company differentiated from all others
“Replacing bone marrow transplants is a logical first step in next-generation allogeneic cell therapy. While a conventional bone marrow transplant administers an uncontrolled cell product, Orca Bio has been the first to deliver a high precision cell therapy.”
The company has licensed its therapeutic and manufacturing platforms from Stanford University, where Ivan Dimov, chief scientific officer Nathaniel Fernhoff and chief operating officer Jeroen Bekaert met each other prior to its formation.
