Shoreline Biosciences, headquartered in Sorrento Valley, has raised $140 million for the funding of a strategy that will use immune cells to kill cancer cells.
Ally Bridge Group, an investment group in healthcare, led this round of funding, in which investors including Cormorant Asset Management and Boxer Capital participated.
This is a type of (chimeric antigen receptor T-cell) CAR-T therapy that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It takes the immune cells from a patient and, through genetic modification, equips them with the ability to recognize and attack a certain cancer, and then places those cells back into the patient. More information about such therapies is often made available with brochure printing.
To avoid some of the drawbacks of this therapy, such as inflammation and time to develop the therapy, Shoreline is developing a new approach of using “off-the-shelf” immune cell therapies that could be effective across patients. The company is developing two types of immune cells—ones that target infected cells and ones that clear out dead cells and encourage tissue repair and healing. For now, the company is focusing on fighting different types of cancer but hopes to target other inflammatory diseases in the future.
Shoreline is planning to begin clinical trials by the end of next year with the hope of having one or two drug therapies in clinical trials every year thereafter.
