UCL and Francis Crick-founded Achilles has raised series B funding at a reported $228m valuation and will now look to advance lung cancer and melanoma treatments.

Achilles Therapeutics, a UK-based cancer immunotherapy developer spun out from University College London and Francis Crick Institute, completed a £100m ($120m) series B round today led by fund manager RA Capital Management.
Life sciences investment trust Syncona also took part in the round, as did venture capital firm Forbion, hedge fund manager Perceptive Advisors, advisory firm Redmile Group and investment firm Invus. It valued the company at $228m according to the Financial Times.
Achilles is working on cancer therapies that will equip the patient’s immune system with engineered T-cells in a bid to combat the disease.
The spinout aims to create T-cells specifically tailored to neoantigen protein markers located on the exterior of a patient’s cancerous cells, based on information from its Peleus bioinformatics platform.
Such personalised T-cell therapies could limit the propensity of therapeutic resistance and immune evasion by cancer cells, while sparing damage to the patient’s healthy tissue.
Achilles will initially target non-small cell lung cancer and melanoma, and plans to use the series B cash to begin proof-of-concept studies targeting both indications later in 2019. It will also expand manufacturing capacity and broaden its preclinical product pipeline.
RA Capital principal Derek DiRocco and Rogier Rooswinkel, a partner at Forbion, have joined the company’s board of directors in conjunction with the round.
Achilles was launched in 2016 with $16.8m of funding from cornerstone investors Syncona and Cancer Research Technology, the tech transfer arm of research charity Cancer Research UK.