T1D Fund’s investment to advance Repertoire’s platform for innovative cures to treat Type 1 Diabetes
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Repertoire Immune Medicines, a newly launched company working to unleash the curative power of the immune system to prevent and cure disease, today announced an investment from the JDRF T1D Fund, a venture philanthropy vehicle focused on accelerating life-changing solutions to cure, prevent and treat type 1 diabetes (T1D). The investment from the JDRF T1D Fund will enable the company to utilize its core platforms to discover new antigens and T cell receptors in hopes of advancing the development of treatments and cures for T1D. Terms of the private financing were not disclosed.
Launched in December 2016 to accelerate growth in the T1D investment market, the T1D Fund is the first scale, mission-driven venture philanthropy fund focused on commercial investments in companies delivering solutions to patients living with or at risk of developing the autoimmune disease. With nearly $100 million in assets under management, the T1D Fund has invested in 19 innovative companies in areas that include therapeutics, devices, vaccines and diagnostics.
“We are excited by Repertoire Immune Medicines’ world-class team and believe the highly innovative platform can enable a range of different therapies to change the trajectory for people with T1D,” said Katie Ellias, Managing Director at the JDRF T1D Fund. “Repertoire’s approach could yield a comprehensive decoding of dominant antigens and T cell receptors for different T1D patient subgroups, which remains a challenge and key priority for T1D drug discovery and development.”
The journey for Repertoire Immune Medicines commenced when Flagship Labs’ scientists contemplated how to rationally and efficiently direct the power of our T cells for therapeutics and cures. One origination group, led by David Berry, M.D., Ph.D., General Partner of Flagship Pioneering, focused on systematically unlocking antigen specific immune control. In parallel, another Flagship origination group, led by Doug Cole, M.D., General Partner of Flagship Pioneering, and based on the cytokine binding work from Prof. Darrell Irvine’s lab at MIT, focused on using autologous T cells to direct potent immune modulators to the tumor microenvironment.
Repertoire Immune Medicines was then formed by combining two Flagship companies – the innovative and proprietary immune decoding platforms of Cogen Immune Medicines and the immuno-oncology platforms of Torque Therapeutics to create a fully integrated Immune Medicines company. At the helm is Chief Executive Officer John Cox, who most recently led the spin-off of Bioverativ (BIIV) from Biogen (BIIB), and its growth and successful acquisition by Sanofi (SNY).
“Our focus at Repertoire Immune Medicines is to decipher the immune system, specifically looking at human subject-derived antigen-T cell receptor (TCR) codes from healthy or diseased tissues, which dictates T cell activation or exhaustion. These immunological codes can be used to design and clinically test a multitude of unprecedented therapeutic products,” said John Cox, Chief Executive Officer of Repertoire Immune Medicines. “We are enthusiastic about working with the JDRF T1D Fund on this important autoimmune disease that impacts 1.6M people in the U.S. with no approved disease modifying therapy.”
About JDRF T1D Fund
The JDRF T1D Fund (www.t1dfund.org) is a venture philanthropy fund accelerating life-changing solutions to cure, prevent and treat type 1 diabetes (T1D) through catalytic equity investments. Through its investments in partnership with private capital, including venture capital, corporations and foundations, the T1D Fund seeks to attract the private investment necessary to advance therapeutics, devices, diagnostics, and vaccines into the hands of those living with T1D. The T1D Fund invests in areas strategically aligned with JDRF, the leading global organization funding T1D research, with an exclusive focus on supporting the best commercial opportunities. The T1D Fund reinvests any realized gains into new investments to further its mission.
About Repertoire Immune Medicines
Repertoire Immune Medicines, a Flagship Pioneering company, is a clinical stage biotechnology company working to unleash the remarkable power of the human immune system to prevent, treat or cure cancer, autoimmune conditions and infectious diseases. The company is founded on the premise that the repertoire of TCR-antigen codes that drive health and disease represents one of the greatest opportunities for innovation in medical science. The company harnesses and deploys the intrinsic ability of T cells to prevent and cure disease. Repertoire scientists created and developed a suite of technologies for its DECODE discovery and DEPLOY product platforms that allow in-depth characterization of the immune synapse and the ability to rationally design, and clinically develop, multi-clonal immune medicines. The company is currently conducting experimental medicine clinical trials using autologous T cells primed against cancer antigens and tethered to IL-15. To learn more about Repertoire Immune Medicines, please visit our website: www.repertoire.com and follow us on LinkedIn.
About Flagship Pioneering
Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category life sciences companies to transform human health and sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has applied a unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in over $30 billion in aggregate value. To date, Flagship is backed by more than $3.3 billion of aggregate capital commitments, of which over $1.7 billion has been deployed toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside more than $10 billion of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises 37 transformative companies, including: Axcella Health (NADAQ: AXLA), Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Evelo Biosciences (NASDAQ: EVLO), Foghorn Therapeutics, Indigo Agriculture, Kaleido Biosciences (NASDAQ: KLDO), Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Rubius Therapeutics (NASDAQ: RUBY), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), and Syros Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SYRS). To learn more about Flagship Pioneering, please visit our website: www.FlagshipPioneering.com.
Contacts
Niki Franklin
Racepoint Global on behalf of Repertoire Immune Medicines
+1 (617) 624-3264
nfranklin@racepointglobal.com