US-based immunotherapy developer Tmunity Therapeutics completed a $100m series A round today featuring biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, insurance firm Ping An, pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and cellular research provider Be The Match BioTherapies.
University of Pennsylvania and Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy also participated in the round. Ping An and Eli Lilly invested through subsidiaries Ping An Ventures and Lilly Asia Ventures respectively.
Tmunity is developing T cell immunotherapy treatments for patients suffering from cancer, infectious diseases and autoimmune diseases that will work by activating T cells, white blood cells that are important for triggering the body’s immune system.
The company was formed through a collaboration and license agreement with University of Pennsylvania, and it also collaborates with University of Minnesota.
Jiang Zhang, managing partner of Ping An Ventures, said: “Tmunity is unlike any other cell-based immunotherapy ‘startup’ because of the unrivalled expertise of its scientific founders and leadership team in cell and gene therapy and its proven translational and manufacturing success in T cell medicine.
“We were also attracted to the global potential of the pipeline, especially the T cell therapies in oncology in China, as well as the scope beyond oncology into autoimmune and infectious diseases, as we begin to expand our investment portfolio.”
Lilly Asia Ventures had previously joined Penn Medicine, University of Pennsylvania’s academic medical centre, to invest $10m in Tmunity in early 2016.