Accession Therapeutics raises £25m
ARC Oxford member, Accession Therapeutics Limited, which is developing novel, first-in-class immunotherapies targeted at tumour sites and administered systemically to provide a step-change in cancer treatment, has raised £25m. This will fund it through the generation of the first clinical data for its lead product TROCEPT-01. The financing, which will also advance its second programme to clinical trial readiness, brings the total funds committed to Accession Therapeutics in the 30 months since operations started to over £50 million. TROCEPT-01 will be the first product generated by Accession Therapeutics’ TROCEPT platform to enter the clinic. The platform is highly tuneable with the ability to administer a variety of potent anti-cancer transgene payloads specifically to tumours.
As well as providing clinical proof-of-concept of the TROCEPT platform, the proceeds of the fundraising round will enable manufacture of clinical trial material and completion of IND-enabling studies for the next programme, leveraging the efficiencies and experience gained from TROCEPT-01. The internal early-stage pipeline will also be progressed.
Attracted by TROCEPT’s potential to create the ideal immunotherapy, the fundraising round was led by serial backers of CEO Professor Bent Jakobsen’s research-to-clinic leadership. He is a serial entrepreneur in the immunotherapy space and has founded public biotech companies.
Lead product TROCEPT-01 encodes a clinically validated immune checkpoint inhibitor as the payload that will be produced and secreted by cancer cells. It has the potential to expand the indications where checkpoint inhibitors have been successful and increase cancer response rates through high tumour-localised production of the drug where it is needed. It has shown very encouraging data in its IND-enabling studies. TROCEPT-01 is expected to enter the clinic in 2024 for multiple significant solid tumour indications (such as non-small cell lung, bladder, head and neck, and pancreatic cancers). The second TROCEPT programme, which encodes an extremely potent universal bispecific immune activator, is expected to start clinical trials a year later.
Bent Jakobsen, PhD FMedSci, CEO of Accession Therapeutics, said, ‘We’re delighted that our swift evolution into a clinical stage company is being financed by our long-term investors. Accession Therapeutics thanks them for their support which will enable us to demonstrate the huge clinical and commercial potential of the TROCEPT platform via our first clinical data.’
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