While many cell therapy developers are embracing every change they can engineer to optimize their CAR constructs, the messaging from Triumvira Immunologics is to keep it simple. By combining the best features of CAR-T and TCR therapies, it’s hoping to create a cell therapy to competitively take on both liquid and solid tumors.

Avoiding drawbacks of CARs: Triumvira aims to take TCRs to the next level with its T cell Antigen Coupler (TAC), harnessing endogenous TCR activity with CAR-like activation.

The construct co-opts the native TCR, while also enabling activation through its own engineered antigen binding and co-receptor domains. This allows the TAC to activate or silence the T-cell, without the use of gene editing.

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In today’s challenging market, some biotech companies are going the extra mile to keep their existing investors, reopening earlier rounds and moving to rolling closings.

CFOs of early-stage biotechnology firms get a lot of practice in the art of raising money.

No matter the market cycle, they must find capital to fund costly research that will ideally lead to new drugs or treatments that generate revenue — and turn them cash-flow positive.

Finance chiefs at pre-revenue companies must tamp down cash-burn as much as possible, get employees paid and keep labs operating while continually building a funding runway. “The minute we close one financing, you have to start thinking about the next one,” Scott Praill, CFO of San Diego, Calif.-based Kintara Therapeutics, said in an interview. “That’s always on your mind.”

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In today’s challenging market, some biotech companies are going the extra mile to keep their existing investors, reopening earlier rounds and moving to rolling closings.

CFOs of early-stage biotechnology firms get a lot of practice in the art of raising money.

No matter the market cycle, they must find capital to fund costly research that will ideally lead to new drugs or treatments that generate revenue — and turn them cash-flow positive.

Finance chiefs at pre-revenue companies must tamp down cash-burn as much as possible, get employees paid and keep labs operating while continually building a funding runway. “The minute we close one financing, you have to start thinking about the next one,” Scott Praill, CFO of San Diego, Calif.-based Kintara Therapeutics, said in an interview. “That’s always on your mind.”

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After the bonanza of 2021, life-sciences entrepreneurs reset their expectations as financing contracted

Biopharma happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Acelyrin, Adcendo, Algernon, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Caris, Celmatix, Duality, Esperovax, Evotec, Ginkgo, Lumen, Merck & Co., Nouscom, Orbit, Orna, Paratek, Phoremost, Sanegene, Simnova Xianbo, Triumvira, Variational Ai, Xencor, Y-Mabs.

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After the bonanza of 2021, life-sciences entrepreneurs reset their expectations as financing contracted

Biotechnology entrepreneurs recalibrated in 2022 as their financing options narrowed, a reversal from years in which life-sciences startups were flush with capital.

With just two weeks left in the year, U.S. biotechs had raked in $29.7 billion for 2022, compared with the record—$38.7 billion—deployed in all of 2021, according to market tracker PitchBook Data Inc.

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