Temasek and EDBI Partake in Series A Round in Tessa Therapeutics
Posted on 06/10/2022
Singapore-based Tessa Therapeutics Ltd. is a clinical-stage cell therapy company developing next-generation cancer treatments for hematological malignancies and solid tumors. Tessa Therapeutics closed a US$ 126 million Series A financing round. Polaris Partners led the financing with participation from existing investors, including Temasek Holdings, Singapore Economic Development Board (EDBI), Heliconia Capital, and Heritas Capital. In conjunction with the financing, Amy Schulman and Darren Carroll, Managing Partners at Polaris Partners, have joined Tessa’s Board of Directors.
Tessa plans to use the proceeds from the financing to advance the ongoing clinical development of the company’s autologous CD30-CAR-T therapy (TT11) and allogeneic CD30.CAR EBVST therapy (TT11X) programs. The CD30-CAR-T clinical trial supplies will be manufactured in Tessa’s newly qualified state of the art commercial cGMP facility.
Tessa’s lead program TT11, is an autologous CD30 chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy that harvests the patient’s own T-cells and modifies them to target cancer cells expressing the CD30 protein, a well-validated lymphoma target. Clinical data from the pilot stage of the ongoing Phase 2 CHARIOT trial of TT11 presented at ASH demonstrated a favorable safety profile and promising efficacy in relapsed or refractory CD30-positive classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) patients, with a complete response (CR) rate of 57.1 percent and an overall response rate (ORR) of 71.4 percent. Tessa expects to advance to the pivotal Phase 2 CHARIOT trial later this year. A second program TT11X, is based on Tessa’s proprietary allogeneic CD30.CAR EBVST platform. The platform overcomes toxicity challenges common to “off the shelf” cell therapies such as Graft vs Host Disease (GVHD) by using allogeneic Virus specific T-cells (VSTs) augmented with CD30-CAR.