OverT Bio Raises $16 Million, Tapping Innovative Reprogramming of Immune Cells to Deliver Next-Generation Therapies
06 Mayo 2024 - 9:00AM
Business Wire
OverT combines cutting-edge cell engineering
technologies with big data approaches to address major unmet
medical needs in solid tumors
OverT Bio, a data-driven company working to unlock the curative
potential of cell therapies in solid tumors, announced today that
it has raised $16 million in seed funding. The round was co-led by
ARTIS Ventures and Wing VC, with participation from Fusion Fund,
OMX Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, Gaingels,
Civilization Ventures, Hawktail, and Cancer Research Institute. The
funding will go toward expanding discovery platforms focused on
addressing the primary barriers for cell therapy, leading to
durable and curative treatments for advanced solid tumors.
OverT is the first to use patients’ immune response to cancer to
find new receptors and targets that can be applied across the human
population. The team searches the entire human genome to find new
ways to make cell therapies more durable and capable of destroying
cancers. The foundational science has been featured in leading
scientific and medical journals, such as Nature and The New England
Journal of Medicine.
“Cell therapies have shown, at least in blood cancers, that we
can aim to completely cure patients that have even the most
advanced diseases rather than just prolong their survival,” said
Dr. Mat Legut, co-founder and CEO of OverT. “With OverT’s ability
to rapidly screen and engineer thousands of genes, we are building
next-generation therapies to cure advanced cancers of the solid
tissues.”
OverT Bio combines cutting-edge cell engineering technologies
with big data approaches to address major unmet medical needs in
solid tumors. OverT has developed unique massively parallel genetic
screening, single-cell multiomic, and synthetic biology platforms
to build next-generation cell therapies. OverT’s core platform
searches every gene in the genome to identify the best genetic
modifications to endow immune cells with novel properties. The
company has also built a similarly high-throughput approach to
discover new receptors and targets that are both safe and
efficacious.
“The OverT team is supercharging cell therapies and finding new
cures for cancer,” said Sara Choi, partner at Wing VC. “They’re a
company that thinks differently and is guided by cutting-edge
science – new ways to reprogram T cells, a new class of safe and
broadly cancer-specific receptors often ignored by most
immunologists. We look forward to supporting the team as they
explore the edges of what’s possible in biotech.”
“Everything OverT does is based on a patient-centric mission and
focused on developing therapies that extend and enhance the lives
of cancer patients,” said Dr. Vasudev Bailey, partner at ARTIS
Ventures. “OverT’s approaches to modifying cell behavior and for
receptor discovery are highly differentiated from everything else
out there. Instead of making incremental tweaks to existing
therapies, OverT is making bold bets on how to create truly
transformative cell therapies.”
Leveraging decades of experience in cell therapy and immunology,
OverT’s founding team has built a large intellectual property
portfolio encompassing multiple discovery platforms and preclinical
assets. Co-founder and CEO, Dr. Mat Legut, is an immunologist and
entrepreneur with a track record of translating discoveries into
clinical products, and co-founder, Dr. Neville Sanjana, is a
faculty member at the New York Genome Center and NYU, and a pioneer
in CRISPR and high-throughput functional genomics.
To learn more about OverT, please visit overt.bio.
About OverT Bio
OverT Bio is developing effective and safe cellular therapies
for solid tumors. Founded in 2022 by Dr. Mat Legut and Dr. Neville
Sanjana, OverT has pioneered new pooled functional screening and
synthetic genomics platforms (OverTarget™ and OverTCR™) to develop
next-generation engineered immune cells. OverT is based in New York
and has raised $16 million in total funding from investors,
including Alexandria Venture Investments, ARTIS Ventures, Cancer
Research Institute, Civilization Ventures, Fusion Fund, Gaingels,
Hawktail, OMX Ventures and Wing VC. For more information, visit
overt.bio.
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