Immunotherapy specialist iCamuno is looking to make big strides in cancer treatment with its three groundbreaking new platforms and a clinical-grade cell bank.

iCamuno Biotherapeutics is positioning itself at the forefront of iPSC-derived universal, off-the-shelf cell therapies. Less than a year after its founding, it completed three rounds of financing, raising a total of $31 million to realize this vision.

“iCamuno is promoting iPSC-derived NK cell-based therapy products for the treatment of both hematologic malignancies and solid tumors,” said iCamuno founder Zhiyong He. “We have carried out five collaborations in the field of regenerative medicine as well.”

Zhiyong He, co-founder of iCamuno

The drugmaker will advance its first pipeline iPSC-NK cell to the clinical stage by the end of this year or early next year.

One important challenge in the manufacturing of iPSC-based therapies is the efficiency and robustness of tightly controlled directed differentiation processes. To this end, iCamuno has built a multidisciplinary composite platform to enhance differentiation efficiency and functionality. It includes iCam-iPSC, gene editing and computer algorithm platforms.

In addition, the company’s manufacturing capacity can support the differentiation of cells in all three germ layers from iPSC. It has also established a GMP cell bank to ensure a continuous and stable supply of cells from the clinical stage to commercialization.

Shortly after its founding in 2021 in BioBAY Suzhou, the company closed seed funding and then a Series A funding round five months later. In April 2022, it announced a Series A round of over 200 million RMB ($28 million) supported by Westlake Innovation Investment, New Alliance Capital, 5Y Capital, Co-win Ventures and Delian Capital.

Boosting differentiation efficiency

He further explained how the platforms enhance iPSC’s differentiation efficiency, explaining that an important feature of iPSC cell therapy products’ production is the final product form is still cells. This means the beginning is the end, so the high-efficiency state of cells must be maintained throughout the process.

Controlling target-cells’ differentiation efficiency and activity requires understanding target cell biology, developmental biology and the necessary conditions for starting cell quality. It is a multidisciplinary undertaking.

Every individual cell has the same cellular genome but ends up differentiating into different types of functional cells. These differences are the result of differences in transcriptomics and epigenomics caused by epigenetic modifications.

“iPSC-derived cells have the same characteristics,” said He. “Using the computer algorithm platform, we have worked out how to differentiate iPSC cells from the specific epigenomic and transcriptomic state to the functional-cell state. The intelligent screening function of our platform can greatly reduce the time of the whole iPSC differentiation process.”

These core technologies come primarily from the research of two founders and form the bedrock of iCamuno Biotherapeutics. Another iCamuno founder, Xiaodong Liu, has conducted a lot of research in the field of iPSC and published a series of articles and achievements, including two articles in Nature, one of which was a cover story in the March 2021. Science Magazine also named his research one of 2021’s top 10 scientific breakthroughs.

 Xiaodong Liu, co-founder of iCamuno

Diving into iPSC-NK cells

The company is focuses on developing immunotherapies for cancer. “We are developing iPSC-derived NK cell therapy as our first pipeline for the treatment of hematologic malignancies,” He said. Additionally, in the solid tumor space, iCamuno reached a global strategic collaboration agreement with Biotheus to co-develop two iPSC-CAB-NK cell therapy products in June 2021.

Why choose natural killer (NK) cell therapy as the first pipeline? He explained that the first consideration was the unmet clinical needs in the oncology market. Moreover, NK cells kill cancer cells directly through various mechanisms and offer several advantages over T cells.

iPSCs allow for an unlimited number of uniform NK cells to be produced from the starting pluripotent stem cell population to provide a standardized, off-the-shelf approach. Several overseas companies have demonstrated efficacies in the iPSC-NK areas, such as Fate Therapeutics and Cytovia Therapeutics. Fate’s iPSC-derived NK cell FT596, for instance, demonstrated good safety and efficacy in phase I clinical trials for treating relapsed / refractory B-cell lymphoma (BCL) at ASH 2021.

In addition to oncology immunotherapies, iPSCs can be converted to pancreatic beta cells for diabetes, mesenchymal stem cells for osteoarthritis or dopaminergic neural precursor cells for Parkinson's.

iCamuno has reached five strategic cooperation agreements with leading companies to develop iPSC-based universal cell therapies for osteoarthritis and retina-related diseases. “Cooperation is an important development strategy for the company, and we keep an open mind to promote pipeline cooperation,” said He.