Big deal: Syncona composes Quell with $46m series A

Quell Therapeutics, a UK-based cell therapy developer co-founded by researchers at King’s College London (KCL), University College London (UCL) and Hannover Medical School (MHH), formally launched today with £35m ($46m) in series A funding.
The round was led by founding investor life sciences investment trust Syncona, with participation from UCL Technology Fund, the university venture fund managed by Albion Capital in partnership with tech transfer office UCL Business.
Syncona supplied $44.6m, and will own 69.3% of the business. The round consisted of two tranches, with an initial $10.4m supplied by Syncona two months ago.
Founded in March 2019, Quell Therapeutics aims to develop engineered T regulatory (Treg) cell therapies to treat conditions including autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, as well as solid organ transplant rejection. Treg cells, a subset of T-cells, play a role in regulating or suppressing other cells in the immune system.
Quell’s launch has been a relatively long time coming. Sycona identified Treg cell therapy as an area of high interest in late 2017, with the specific goal of forming a spinout that would become a global leader in the field.
To pull it all off, Syncona brought on board six leading researchers, including three from KCL – Giovanna Lombardi, professor of human transplant immunology, and Alberto Sanchez-Fueyo, professor of hepatology in the Institute of Liver Studies, as well as Marc Martinez-Llordella, senior lecturer in the Institute of Liver Studies.
Hans Stauss, professor of tumour immunology and director of the Institute of Immunity and Transplantation at UCL, and Emma Morris, professor of clinical cell and gene therapy and the inflammation, immunity and immunotherapeutics theme director of the National Institute for Health Research at UCL Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre, also joined the company.
Finally, Syncona also signed up Elmar Jäckel, co-leader of the liver transplant program and group leader of immune tolerance in the department of gastroenterology, hepatology and endocrinology at MHH.
Sanchez-Fueyo said: “We are delighted to partner Syncona to found Quell and are excited to work with the team to develop the next generation of engineered Treg cell therapies.
“The founder team has a unique cross-section of expertise, built over decades of scientific research and we believe there is a significant opportunity to develop novel therapies for the treatment of solid organ transplant and autoimmune conditions. We share Syncona’s vision to bring products to patients in areas of high unmet medical need and are looking forward to the journey ahead.”
Stauss added: “Quell brings together the expertise in clinical trials, regulatory T-cell biology and gene engineering at UCL, KCL and MHH. It is exciting to have the backing of Syncona to develop a new class of living medicine to avoid transplant rejection and treat autoimmune diseases.”
There are more than 80 known autoimmune diseases and the implications for a successful treatment for these diseases alone could be significant. Research collaboration program Connect Immune Research, supported by the British Society for Immunology, estimates that 4 million people live with at least one autoimmune disease in the UK, including 400,000 with type 1 diabetes and even more with rheumatoid arthritis. Up to 1.3 million people live with more than one autoimmune condition, the group estimates.
The statistics are even more harrowing in the US, where the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association estimates about 50 million people – 20% of the population – live with an autoimmune disease. Women are thought to make up to 30 million of these.
Finding a way to halt organ transplant rejection could prove even more transformational. Patients are currently required to take immunospressing medication for the rest of their life following a transplant, but this does not always prevent the body’s immune system from attacking the donor organ. Stanford Medicine, the medical school of Stanford University, has estimated that about 25% of kidney recipients and 40% of heart recipients experience an episode of acute rejection in the first year following transplant surgery.
Quell Therapeutics will put the series A round towards initiating the development of its first program. Syncona will collaborate closely with the company as it scales its operations and builds its management team.
Martin Murphy, chief executive of Syncona, has been appointed chairman of Quell, while Elisa Petris and Freddie Dear, partners at Synonca, have joined the board as director and observer respectively. Murphy said: “Quell is the 10th life sciences company to be founded by Syncona and clearly demonstrates our proactive model in areas of deep domain expertise.
“We identified an innovative area of science with the potential to deliver dramatic impact for patients and worked to build a company around it. It is an exciting addition to our cell therapy platform, where we are strategically and uniquely positioned with expertise across a range of modalities.”
These 10 companies include Nightstar Therapeutics, set up to commercialise therapies for rare inherited retinal conditions based on research by Robert MacLaren, professor at the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology at University of Oxford, and acquired by biotechnology producer Biogen for $800m this past March – proving that Syncona is a force to be reckoned with in the healthcare space, and that Quell Therapeutics, despite it being early days, has enormous potential.