Link Cell Therapies Emerges From Stealth With $60 Million

<p><strong><span class&equals;"legendSpanClass">SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO <&sol;span><&sol;strong>&&num;8212&semi; Link Cell Therapies&comma; an oncology cell therapy company&comma; announced its official launch from stealth with a &dollar;60 million Series A financing that was led by Johnson &amp&semi; Johnson&comma; through its corporate venture capital organization&comma; Johnson &amp&semi; Johnson Innovation – JJDC&comma; Inc&period; &comma; with participation from founding investors Samsara BioCapital and Sheatree Capital&comma; as well as Wing Venture Capital and other new strategic and financial investors&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Link&&num;8217&semi;s proprietary logic-gating technologies allow for safe targeting of multiple antigens that are co-expressed on cancer cells but do not overlap or only minimally overlap in their normal healthy tissue expression&period; This platform enables the creation of next-generation CAR-T therapeutics for solid and liquid cancers built upon an entirely new landscape of &&num;8220&semi;clean&&num;8221&semi; target pairs&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;We recognized that for most cancer types&comma; particularly solid tumors&comma; the promise of CAR-T therapies is limited by a dearth of cancer-specific targets and abundant expression of most solid tumor targets in normal vital tissue&comma;&&num;8221&semi; said Co-Founder Robbie Majzner&comma; MD of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School&period; &&num;8220&semi;Link is advancing a technology that we developed while at Stanford University that allows for logic-gated CAR-T cell control&period; The Link-based CAR activates and kills target cells only when a combination of antigens is co-localized on the tumor&comma; thereby bypassing normal tissues that express only one of those targets&period; We believe this approach will enable potent CAR-T therapies to attack a wide range of tumors while sparing healthy tissue&period;&&num;8221&semi;<b><&sol;b><&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The Series A financing&comma; which follows a 2022 Seed Round led by Samsara and Sheatree&comma; adds a number of strong financial and strategic investors to the syndicate&comma; including JJDC&comma; Inc&comma; Bristol Myers Squibb&comma; Kyowa Kirin&comma; Wing Venture Capital&comma; and Sherpa Healthcare Partners&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;It has been a pleasure to support Link Cell Therapies since its founding&comma;&&num;8221&semi; said Abraham Bassan&comma; Member of the Link Board of Directors and Partner at Samsara BioCapital&period; &&num;8220&semi;The team at Link has advanced a unique technology that could enable the development of multiple&comma; impactful treatments for patients with cancer&period; I have been impressed with the team&&num;8217&semi;s achievements and the progress on Link&&num;8217&semi;s lead program and pipeline&period;&&num;8221&semi;<b><&sol;b><&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Link&&num;8217&semi;s lead program&comma; LNK001 for the treatment of renal cell carcinoma &lpar;&&num;8220&semi;RCC&&num;8221&semi;&rpar;&comma; is on track for an Investigational New Drug &lpar;IND&rpar; application and initiation of dosing in a Phase I clinical trial in 2026&period; LNK001 targets two antigens that are uniquely and highly co-expressed in most RCC tumors&period; LNK001 is designed to enable tumor-specific efficacy while avoiding on-target&comma; off-tumor toxicity that has limited prior experimental therapies targeting each individual antigen&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Link&&num;8217&semi;s second program being developed for colorectal cancer will target Development Candidate selection in 2026 and initiation of human clinical studies in 2027&period; The company has multiple additional CAR-T programs in earlier development in solid and liquid cancers that will be developed internally or through partnerships&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;