Shinobi Therapeutics Launches with Completion of $51M Series A to Advance Hypoimmune iPS-T Cell Therapy Platform

Proceeds to support company in advancing its first off-the-shelf iPS-T cell therapy against GPC3+ cancers toward the clinic

Oversubscribed Series A led by EQT Life Sciences, F-Prime Capital and Eight Roads Ventures Japan, with participation from Astellas Venture Management, Fast Track Initiative (FTI), JIC Venture Growth Investments, and D3 LLC

Carl June, M.D., pioneer of CAR-T cell therapy, appointed to Scientific Advisory Board

Licensed technology from Kyoto University and University of California, San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO and KYOTO, Japan, Dec. 12, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Shinobi Therapeutics (Shinobi), the biotechnology company developing a new class of immune evasive iPS-T cell therapies, today announced that it has closed a $51 million Series A financing. The oversubscribed round was led by EQT Life Sciences, F-Prime Capital and Eight Roads Ventures Japan, with participation from Astellas Venture Management, Fast Track Initiative (FTI), JIC Venture Growth Investments, and D3 LLC. Shinobi will use the funds to advance its 'Katana' iPS-T cell therapy platform and progress its first program to treat GPC3+ solid tumor cancers toward the clinic.

"We're thrilled to launch Shinobi out of stealth with a clear mission to develop an all-in-one solution to address some of the biggest challenges facing the cell therapy space today," said Dan Kemp, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Shinobi. "Having led several cell therapy programs at other global companies, I've never encountered a technology platform that is capable of advancing the field as dramatically as this."

Cell therapies have shown remarkable promise in treating blood cancers and other intractable diseases, but manufacturing costs render these therapies inaccessible to many patients around the world. Off-the-shelf cell therapies offer a more scalable manufacturing approach, but face the additional challenge of allo-rejection, as patients' immune systems reject donor-derived and engineered cells as foreign invaders. To overcome this immune response, patients today receive immunosuppressive drugs before treatment, which can often result in unwanted side effects and serious complications. Shinobi is taking a different approach by creating therapies that work with, not against, the patient's immune system.

Shinobi's unique approach uses methods developed by scientific co-founders Tobias Deuse, M.D. and Shin Kaneko, M.D., Ph.D., to first edit iPSCs to become highly immune evasive before they are differentiated with the company's proprietary Katana technology to create CD8αβ iPS-T cells. "Shinobi's Katana platform has the potential to make CAR-T cell therapies accessible to patients on a global scale," said Carl June, M.D., who has been appointed to Shinobi's Scientific Advisory Board.

"Shinobi stands alone in the growing cell therapy field by engineering the most comprehensive immune evasion technology directly into its cell products," said Robert Weisskoff, Ph.D, Partner at F-Prime Capital. "With our colleagues at Eight Roads Ventures Japan and Donald Payan M.D., we envisioned combining the decade's worth of iPSC research pioneered by Shin Kaneko M.D., Ph.D and developed by Yasumichi Hitoshi M.D., Ph.D. and Ryosuke Gonotsubo in Kyoto, Japan, with breakthrough immune evasion technology created by Tobias Deuse, M.D. in San Francisco. Shinobi Therapeutics is the result of these merged technologies, which delivers an allogeneic platform that effectively protects cell therapies from T cells, innate immune cells, as well as antibody-mediated immune rejection."

"The full potential of allogeneic cell therapies will likely never be realized without overcoming the challenge of allo-rejection," said Fouad Azzam, Ph.D., Partner at EQT Life Sciences. "Shinobi's hypoimmune technology opens the door to a broader pipeline of off-the-shelf cell therapies far beyond T cells and oncology. We're planning to leverage this platform in important areas of regenerative medicine and autoimmune disease."

About Shinobi Therapeutics

Shinobi Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing a new class of off-the-shelf immune evasive iPSC-derived cell therapies. Based on the research of scientific co-founders Shin Kaneko, M.D., Ph.D., at Kyoto University and Tobias Deuse, M.D., at University of California, San Francisco, Shinobi has created a new allogeneic CD8αβ iPS-T cell platform that demonstrates comprehensive immune evasion from all arms of the immune system. For more information, please visit www.shinobitx.com.

About EQT Life Sciences

EQT Life Sciences was formed in 2022 following an integration of LSP, a leading European life sciences and healthcare venture capital firm, into the EQT platform. As LSP, the firm raised over EUR 3.0 billion (USD 3.5 billion) and supported the growth of more than 150 companies since it started to invest over 30 years ago. With a dedicated team of highly experienced investment professionals, coming from backgrounds in medicine, science, business, and finance, EQT Life Sciences backs the smartest inventors who have ideas that could truly make a difference for patients.

More info: www.eqtgroup.com

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About F-Prime Capital

F-Prime Capital is a leading global venture capital firm investing in healthcare and technology to solve the greatest challenges in healthcare and medicine while delivering on the conviction that everyone deserves a gold standard of care.

For over 50 years and with a portfolio of nearly 300 companies and counting spread across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, our independent venture capital group combines singular and deep expertise in life science, healthcare, and technology to identify and support founders with the next big ideas in therapeutics, medtech, and healthcare IT and services. With over $4.5 billion dollars under management, our team has created or co-created over 30 companies including Denali, Beam, Innovent, and has helped build many others including Blueprint Medicines, Iora Health, PatientPing, Devoted Health and Ultragenyx. 

F-Prime is headquartered in Cambridge, MA, with offices in London, UK and San Francisco, CA. For more information, please visit www.fprimecapital.com and follow us on X and LinkedIn.

About Eight Roads Ventures

Eight Roads is a global venture capital firm backed by Fidelity, managing over $11bn of assets across offices in China, India, Japan, Europe and the US. With over 50-year history of investing in healthcare and technology, Eight Roads has partnered with more than 300 game-changing and fast-growing companies globally. At Eight Roads Ventures Japan, our strategy in biotech sector is to identify world-class science and to build a global company that will revolutionize medicine.

For more information, please visit https://eightroads.com/en/

SOURCE Shinobi Therapeutics