Epitopea raises US$31 million in pre-Series A financing round

New investors Investissement Québec, adMare BioInnovations and Jonathan Milner joined existing investors Advent Life Sciences, CTI Life Sciences, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Fonds de Solidarité FTQ, the Harrington Discovery Institute, IRICoR and Novateur Ventures in the round.

Epitopea, which has bases in Cambridge, UK and Montreal, Canada is developing accessible off-the-shelf RNA-based immunotherapies for use in hard-to-treat cancers by targeting a new class of untapped tumor-specific antigens, known as Cryptigen™ TSAs, that are broadly shared across multiple patients with the same tumor type.

The company has created an extensive library of novel Cryptigen™ TSAs, discovered by its proprietary CryptoMap™ platform that leverages immunopeptidomics, genomics, and a bioinformatics pipeline, allowing the identification of aberrantly-expressed, tumour-specific antigens (aeTSA’s) that are hidden within cancer’s ’junk’ DNA.

These hidden Cryptigen™ TSAs were first discovered through research led by Drs. Claude Perreault and Pierre Thibault at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer at the Université de Montréal.

Epitopea CEO, Dr. Alan C. Rigby, said: “We believe that more durable cancer therapies are needed to transform the lives of cancer patients diagnosed with hard-to-treat solid tumors where overall survival is still poor for most patients.

“We continue to make significant strides toward the clinic, which has strengthened investor enthusiasm, and resulted in an over-subscribed pre-Series A in support of our forward-looking mission and vision.

“This additional financing will support strategic pre-clinical discovery in solid tumors of interest while accelerating our near-term clinical development plans for Epitopea’s next generation, tumor selective, off-the-shelf, RNA-based immunotherapies that we believe have the potential to extend the durability of clinical response in patients.”

“In this round we would like to warmly welcome new investors Investissement Québec, adMare BioInnovations and Jonathan Milner, whose participation complements the continued passionate support of our existing transatlantic investor syndicate.

“This pre-Series A raise provides the necessary finances to accelerate our development campaigns and transition to a clinical-stage company with a focused commitment of delivering our transformational RNA cancer immunotherapy into the clinic in 2026.”