Asgard Therapeutics, a biotech company pioneering in vivo direct cell reprogramming for cancer immunotherapy, announced it raised €30 million in Series A funding. This funding round will support the development of Asgard´s lead program AT-108 to IND readiness by 2026, expand its R&D team, and advance new reprogramming modalities and delivery platforms.
This funding round was co-led by RV Invest and Johnson & Johnson Innovation—JJDC, with participation from existing investors Novo Holdings, Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, and Industrifonden. RV Investment’s investment manager, Aleksei Zeifman, and a Johnson & Johnson Innovation—JJDC representative will join Asgard’s board of directors in connection with the funding round.
What is AT-108? AT-108 is an off-the-shelf gene therapy that directly reprograms tumor cells into antigen-presenting dendritic cells. This leads to a personalized anti-tumor immune response. AT-108 builds on several publications in the high-impact journal Science Immunology, and it has achieved preclinical proof of concept (PoC) in patient-derived ex vivo models and rodent in vivo models, inducing anti-tumor immunity and abscopal effect even while in a monotherapy setting.
AT-108 reprograms cancer cells in the patient’s body to become conventional Type 1 Dendritic Cells (cDC1s), a rare subset of immune cells. These are critical for effective anti-tumor immunity. And these induced cDC1s present the individual’s specific cancer antigens to the immune system, thus triggering personalized anti-cancer immune responses. Plus, AT-108 is based on a replication-deficient adenoviral vector that delivers 3 transcription factors into tumor cells, rewiring its gene expression signatures and programming them to become immunogenic cDC1-like cells.
KEY QUOTES:
“Asgard’s technology overcomes challenges faced by traditional cell therapies, enabling the recreation of desired functional immune cells directly inside the patient’s body. We believe this breakthrough strategy will give rise to the next generation of cell therapies. This financing also follows a strong pre-clinical package providing PoC for AT-108. We would like to thank both new and existing investors for their support as we discover and develop innovative immunotherapies with breakthrough potential and look forward to progressing our lead program AT-108 to the clinic.”
- Cristiana Pires, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Asgard Therapeutics
“Asgard’s unique approach to cancer immunotherapy by using direct cell reprogramming has great potential to create personalized treatments at scale which could be used in many cancer indications. We’ve been impressed by the elegance of the technology and robustness of the scientific package generated by Asgard’s team. We are delighted to be supporting Asgard’s stellar team on the path of bringing the drug to patients and joining such a strong group of investors.”
- Aleksei Zeifman, Investment Manager of RV Invest
“We’re thrilled to welcome new investors JJDC and RV Invest to Asgard Therapeutics. This marks a significant milestone for Asgard’s novel concept of direct in vivo cellular reprogramming in oncology. We’re proud to continue to support Asgard in its mission to bring an off-the-shelf personalized therapy to the clinic and deliver on the promise of the technology for the benefit of patients.”
- João Ribas, Principal, Novo Holdings, Seed Investments
