Scoop: Carisma stole CAR-M Thunder for a while, but a Utah biotech is quietly raising funds to enter the fray

There’s calm before the storm. And there’s calm after the storm.

That’s the case for a Utah biotech that for years has flown under the CAR-M radar, being outpaced by the likes of Moderna-allied Carisma Therapeutics. The upstart worked calmly, put walls around its IP and purposefully steered clear of talks with institutional investors and pharmas before it would open its doors to a potential storm of attention.

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来源: Endpts

Michael Boyer

CEO Rob Mooney tells Endpoints News the Brigham Young University spinout, named Thunder Biotech, seeks $20 million to go where CAR-T therapies have struggled to go: solid tumors. And leading the research is a chief medical officer familiar with CAR-Ts. Michael Boyer, a University of Utah blood transplant and cell therapy leader, helped investigate Novartis’ CAR-T Kymriah.

Solid tumors devise ways of preventing the T cells from entering the tumor microenvironment. Enter macrophages, which populate the tumor microenvironment. One phenotype of macrophages, M2, is actually a friend to tumors, though, so companies like Thunder and Carisma want to turn them into a foe by converting them to the M1 state, in which they go on a pro-inflammatory offensive and destroy cancer cells.

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Then there’s the hope of doing the opposite in central nervous system indications — think Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis — by converting M1s into M2s to support an anti-inflammatory approach in which the cell therapies tell the body’s immune system that “everything’s good here,” essentially calming down the work of T cells, Mooney explained.

The biotech, well behind Carisma Therapeutics in terms of testing in humans, plans to be in the clinic in two years with an ex vivo program in cancer, Mooney said. But if the team’s nanoparticle delivery, in vivo program “overtakes” that, then timelines will shift.

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To get there, Thunder is raising $20 million in convertible promissory notes, Mooney confirmed to Endpoints, noting the company had previously been slow to file recent SEC papers on prior financing rounds. Angel investors, friends and family have so far injected about $25 million into the coffers, Mooney said.

University of Pennsylvania spinout Carisma kicked off the CAR-M era with the start of its Phase I ex vivo program in February 2021.

“I think the difficulties there are well-documented, and of course, they are looking at broadening their in vivo offering, as well. What we’re doing is what other people are doing,” Mooney said of the Provo, UT-based cell therapy developer that he now leads. “The question is, who can do it better?”

The first target is likely mesothelin, a tumor antigen found in multiple cancers, and then HER2. Carisma has taken the opposite order, and the company, which landed on Nasdaq through a reverse merger, teamed up with Moderna for in vivo cancer programs. There’s also potential for monocytes, the precursor to macrophages.

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来源: Endpts

Kim O’Neill

Licensed out of Thunder CSO Kim O’Neill’s lab at BYU in 2016, the CAR-M biotech initially attracted Mooney’s financial interest, rather than management inclinations.

He offered up capital at the suggestion of physicians who told him the scientists had “something really special” and had “cracked the code” on the tools needed to work with macrophages. In recent months, he was asked to steer the ship into the next phase, and he joined three weeks ago, with the caveat that he be allowed to simultaneously continue leading Curza, a preclinical anti-infective biotech. That other biotech, which is government-funded, is also approaching another capital infusion, he said.

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