Inovio spinoff developing patient-specific cancer therapies raises $10.5M
bizjournals.com
Enlarge
Geneos Therapeutics has raised $10.5 million in a series A financing.
geneostx.com
By John George – Senior Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal
2 hours ago
Geneos Therapeutics, a Montgomery County cancer immunotherapy startup, has raised $10.5 million in a private stock sale according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company was spun off from publicly traded Inovio Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: INO), which like Geneos is based in Plymouth Meeting.
Niranjan Y. Sardesai has stepped down from his post as Inovio’s chief operating officer, to serve full time as CEO of Geneos.
 Enlarge
Geneos CEO Dr. Niranjan Y. Sardesai
Geneos’s series A financing was led by Santé Ventures, a life sciences venture capital firm based in Austin, Texas. Inovio also participated in the round. The financing consisted of a $4.5 million initial investment, according to the SEC filing, and a “milestone driven” option.
The immunotherapy platform Geneos is developing, under an exclusive license from Inovio, targets neoantigens. Neoantigens are mutations and genomic changes that accumulate as tumors develop.
The company’s goal is to develop personalized immunotherapies tailored to each patient's tumor mutations.
Immunotherapies, a new weapon in cancer treatment that has exploded over the past decade, boost the ability of a patient’s own immune system to fight cancer.
Geneos is collaborating with the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. The two organizations recently published proof-of-concept animal model data from preclinical testing of its platform in the scientific journal Cancer Immunology Research.
Sardesai believes the platform will enable Geneos to develop patient-specific cancer fighting treatments in days instead of months or years.
Dr. J. Joseph Kim, Inovio's CEO, said establishing Geneos as a stand-alone company with a "patient-specific direction" will allows Inovio to focus it efforts on developing and commercializing DNA-based vaccines and immunotherapies for major cancer types and infectious diseases affecting global populations.
Largest Philadelphia Metro Area Life Sciences Companies
Ranked by Total Companywide Employment
RankBusiness NameTotal Companywide Employment|
| 1 | GlaxoSmithKline | 98,462 | | 2 | Pfizer | 90,200 | | 3 | Merck & Co. Inc. | 69,000 | | View This List |
|
