A2 Biotherapeutics in Agoura Hills closed its Series B round of financing at $71.5 million, the biotech company announced on Tuesday, bringing the total amount raised to $136 million since its inception in 2018.Proceeds will fund the startup’s “Tmod” platform, a form of cell therapy for cancer, for three near-term drug candidates, the company said in a statement. Financing will also go toward operating A2’s in-house manufacturing facility and expanding the number of product candidates in the pipeline.A2’s cell therapy platform addresses two major problems that immunotherapies have — distinguishing between tumor cells and normal cells, and accessing new cancer targets.“We are the first company to create robust engineered T cells that can integrate two signals in this way, harnessing the awesome power of immune cells to attack tumors that have lost specific genes, while sparing normal cells whose genomes are intact,“ Scott Foraker, chief executive of A2, explained in the statement.The company expects one of its product candidates to begin clinical testing in 2022.The Column Group, Vida Ventures, Samsara BioCapital, Nextech Invest, Casdin Capital, Euclidean Capital, UC Investments (Office of the Chief Investment Officer of the Regents) and Hartford HealthCare Endowment were listed as Series B investors.
