Sonoma BioTherapeutics continues to work toward its goal of restoring immune system balance through complementary regulatory T cell therapy and effector T cell conditioning, this time with the help of an oversubscribed Series B round.
Sonoma BioTherapeutics continues to work toward its goal of restoring immune system balance through complementary regulatory T cell (Treg) therapy and effector T cell (Teff) conditioning, this time with the help of an oversubscribed Series B round.
The South San Francisco and Seattle-based company raised $265 million in the financing round, which comes nearly a year after its $70 million Series A round. The latest round was led by global life sciences-focused investment group Ally Bridge Group, which was joined by new and existing investors.
“We’re proud to lead Sonoma Bio’s Series B financing and support their game-changing efforts to fundamentally change the treatment of autoimmune diseases,” said Frank Yu, founder, CEO and CIO at Ally Bridge Group. “Sonoma Bio, which creates a new therapeutic paradigm, has assembled a leading world-class team who are pioneering technology to unlock this novel cell therapy approach for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.”
The funds from the latest financing round will be used to scale up manufacturing operations to support supply for initial clinical studies. Sonoma’s two most advanced programs are a novel CAR-based Treg cell therapy for refractory rheumatoid arthritis and a Teff conditioning biologic to clear the inflammatory environment and improve Treg cell therapies’ effectiveness.
Treg cell therapies show promise in fundamentally changing how autoimmune patient populations are treated, a group that is typically dramatically underserved.
Sonoma was recently named as one of BioSpace’s “Top Life Sciences Startups to Watch in 2021.” Since its launch in 2020, it has raised over $335 million.
Sonoma was launched by Jeffrey Bluestone, one of the leading immunologists in the field of T-cell activation and immune tolerance research. Before leading Sonoma, Bluestone was president and chief executive officer of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. He also surrendered his tenure at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).
“The Parker Institute was a great opportunity for me to work with the best cancer immunotherapy basic and clinical researchers to engage the immune system to recognize and destroy cancer, but it did not in general tap into my core passion,” Bluestone told BioSpace at the time of the announcement. “The chance to take my lab research and passion to the clinic became compelling. I felt that this was a unique opportunity at this point in my career to translate my core efforts to developing a drug that might change the lives of patients with autoimmunity.”
With help from investors, Bluestone and the Sonoma team hope to make the goal of transforming autoimmunity patients’ lives a reality.
