A clinical-stage biotechnology company secured investment from a Houston-based cancer therapy investment fund to progress its human trials.
Houston-based ImmunoGenesis received the $4.5 million investment from Cancer Focus Fund LP, an investment fund partnered with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center with the purpose of advancing cancer therapies.
The money will support the Phase 1a/1b trial of ImmunoGenesis candidate IMGS-001, an antibody that targets cancer cells that resist immunotherapy. The Phase 1 trials will determine how much of the drug can be given safely to patients without causing side effects.
"Overcoming the widespread resistance to immunotherapy in immune-excluded tumors requires re-envisioning the starting point for treatment," said Dr. Michael Curran, founder of ImmunoGenesis.
The investment will coincide with an upcoming Series A funding round for ImmunoGenesis, which the company said would be completed in the third quarter.
ImmunoGenesis, which was spun out of Curran’s research at MD Anderson, opened a research lab in 2021 within Johnson & Johnson’s JLabs at 2450 Holcombe Blvd. The company announced an expansion of its leadership team around the same time.
Cancer Focus Fund has launched investments for other biotechnology companies at the clinical stage within the past 18 months. In January, the fund invested $5 million in the Netherlands-based ISA Pharmaceuticals for a first-in-human study targeting cancer of the eyes.
In March 2022, the fund invested $5.4 million into Jerusalem-based Nectin Therapeutics’ Phase 1 clinical studies, which took place at MD Anderson. Nectin went on to close a $25 million Series A round — with CFF returning as an investor — later in 2022 before taking its total investment to $33 million at the beginning of 2023 thanks to an investment from the Myeloma Investment Fund.
The fund launched in October 2020 with over $50 million in capital commitments, the Houston Business Journal previously reported. A December 2019 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed the fund sold roughly $50 million in pooled investment fund interests, with $25 million left remaining. There have been no other filings since 2019.
One of the fund’s capital partners, Ochsner Health, brought MD Anderson’s cancer care programs to Louisiana through a new partnership named Ochsner MD Anderson, which began operations on June 22. Ochsner MD Anderson has seven co-branded sites in the Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Covington areas.
Meanwhile, more potential life sciences venture investment is coming to Houston in the form of Chicago-based Portal Innovations, which signed on as a future tenant of the Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park campus in June. Portal CEO John Flavin told Houston Inno that he saw similarities between Chicago and Houston as emerging life sciences environments with key building blocks for further development.
