Palleon Pharmaceuticals has launched with $47.6m in series A funding to commercialise cancer therapies based on technology developed at Stanford and Dundee universities.

Palleon Pharmaceuticals, a US-based immunotherapy developer based on research at Stanford and Dundee universities, closed a $46.7m series A round yesterday backed by Singapore government-backed venture capital firm Vertex Ventures.

The round was led and syndicated by SR One, the investment arm of pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, and also featured Pfizer Ventures, Takeda Ventures and AbbVie Ventures, respective corporate venturing vehicles of healthcare companies Pfizer, Takeda and AbbVie.

Vertex, the VC arm of Singapore state-owned investment firm Temasek, provided the money through its Vertex Healthcare fund.

Palleon Pharmaceuticals is working on drugs that target receptors on immune cells known as glycoimmune checkpoints. The receptors are usually able to trigger immune responses but are tricked by cancer cells, with the resulting immunosuppression allowing tumours to thrive.

The company was co-founded by Carolyn Bertozzi, professor of chemistry at Stanford University and an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Paul Crocker, professor of glycoimmunology and head of the Division of Cell Signalling and Immunology at University of Dundee.

Palleon was incubated at SR One’s offices in Massachusetts, where Jim Broderick was entrepreneur-in-residence before becoming co-founder and chief executive of the spinout. Broderick worked closely with Jens Eckstein, president of SR One, who seeded the company and led the series A round.

Jim Broderick said: “The most meaningful breakthroughs often occur at the intersection of diverse and seemingly unrelated scientific disciplines. Palleon was spawned by bringing together new findings in glycoscience and human immunology, which resulted in unexpected implications for oncology.

“The convergence of these two fields has enabled us to develop a novel class of medicines that could have a significant impact on the lives of cancer patients.”

– This article was updated on October 9 2017 to note that SR One led the series A round and to reflect Jens Eckstein’s involvement.