Asher Bio assesses $55m series A

Asher Biotherapeutics, a US-based immunotherapy developer based partially on research at Washington University in St Louis (WashU) and Leiden University, launched with $55m in series A funding on Tuesday.
Third Rock Ventures led the round, which also attracted MBC Biolabs, the life sciences incubator of Mission Bay Capital, the venture capital arm of University of California-aligned commercialisation office California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences.
Boxer Capital of Tavistock Group, Invus and Y Combinator also participated in the round.
Asher Biotherapeutics is working on an approach to immunotherapy called cis-targeting, which aims to selectively activate only the cell-types that drive the desired immune response. Current immunotherapies typically affect multiple cell-types.
The company’s academic co-founders are Robert Schreiber, professor of pathology and immunology at WashU’s School of Medicine, and Ton Schumacher, senior member at Netherlands Cancer Institute and professor of immuno-technology at Leiden.
Craig Gibbs, chief executive of Asher Bio, said: “Our founders had the insight to focus on designing immunotherapies that would only have their effect on defined immune cell subtypes rather than trying to localise the effect of inherently non-specific molecules.
“Our solution seeks to provide product candidates with superior selectivity and with broad applications across multiple tumour types, as well as treatment of infections and autoimmune diseases.”
Find out more about Washington University in St Louis’ tech transfer operation in our interview with Nichole Mercier.