$325 million Series C funding in its Arsenal (Biosciences)

The financing will be used to develop ArsenalBio’s lead programs through strengthening its pipeline of therapeutic candidates aimed to treat solid tumor cancers, which are based on the firm’s T-cell engineering technology and logic gating.

Additionally, the funds will advance the California-based firm’s development tools and processes for finding new candidate cell therapies.

“This new investment enables us to continue our development roadmap, scale up our manufacturing capabilities, and invest in new avenues for innovation in T-cell medicine.”

“Our initial clinical trials and preclinical studies have shown the promise of our T-cell engineering approach and have given us the confidence to broaden the application of our technology to address additional cancer types,” said Ken Drazan, ArsenalBio’s co-founder and CEO.

The studies referenced by Drazan refer to the company’s recent entry into the clinic with its second T-cell candidate, AB-2100, which nabbed US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fast-track designation. The candidate is being studied in a Phase I/II clinical trial for the treatment of clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC).  

The firm’s pipeline includes various therapies in development for kidney, ovarian, prostate cancers, and other solid tumors being co-developed through a partnership inked with Bristol Myers in January 2021.

The funding round included the following new investors: ARCH Venture Partners, Milky Way Investments Group, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), Regeneron Ventures, Luma Group, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Rock Springs Capital, and others.

The following existing investors continued to support the financing round: The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI), Bristol Myers, Kleiner Perkins, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Byers Capital, Westlake Village BioPartners, and Hitachi Ventures.