LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Advanced biopharmaceutical company PureTech Health noted on Thursday that its affiliate, Vor Biopharma, had raised $42m in a Series A financing round.
The London-listed firm said the round was led by 5AM Ventures and RA Capital Management, with participation from Johnson & Johnson Innovation (JJDC), Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR), Osage University Partners, and itself as a co-founder.

It said the proceeds from the financing would be used to advance Vor's lead engineered hematopoietic stem cell (HSC)-based candidate for the treatment of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) towards the clinic, and to further build its pipeline to treat hematologic malignancies.

PureTech described Vor's approach as being designed to target cancer cells while sparing healthy blood cells, adding that it had the potential to expand the reach of existing targeted immunotherapies to a broad range of patient populations and haematological malignancies, including AML where there was a "significant need" for more-effective, less-toxic treatment options.

Vor's engineered HSC technology platform was designed to address the "fundamental limitations" of the highly potent immunotherapies currently available, including antibody-drug conjugates, bispecific antibodies, and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, it explained.

"Vor's approach is designed to overcome a major limitation of some of the most powerful cancer treatments and to offer a novel therapeutic approach for patients who currently have very few treatment options and poor prognosis," said PureTech Health chief scientific officer Joseph Bolen.

"Funding from this impressive syndicate of financial and strategic investors provides an important endorsement of this unique platform and brings us closer to our goal of addressing the tremendous need for new cancer therapies."

PureTech Health was one of the founding partners in Vor Biopharma, and held around 30.2% of its equity on a diluted basis following the financing round.

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