Immuno-oncology therapy developer Century Therapeutics has emerged from stealth, having been established by Versant Ventures to advance Stanford and Harvard research.

US-based immuno-oncology drug developer Century Therapeutics emerged from stealth yesterday with $250m in funding to commercialise research from Harvard University’s Medical School and Stanford University School of Medicine. Leaps by Bayer, an investment vehicle for pharmaceuticals and chemicals producer Bayer, invested $215m to lead the round, and was joined by Fujifilm Cellular Dynamics (FCDI), a biotech-focused subsidiary of imaging technology producer Fujifilm. Venture capital firm Versant Ventures also took part in the round, having established Century Therapeutics in 2018 to develop allogeneic cell therapies that are intended to target haematologic and solid cancers. The therapies are based on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), a type of stem cell that can be generated directly from adult cells, and which have an unlimited capacity to self-renew. iPSC was pioneered by Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University. Century’s scientific co-founders are Marcela Maus, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cellular Immunotherapy Cancer Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Hiromitsu Nakauchi, professor of genetics at Stanford’s School of Medicine. The company had already formed a partnership with FCDI in 2018 that involved them collaborating on the development of immune effector cells for cancer, while Century has also secured access to FCDI’s technology and intellectual property. Carlo Rizzuto, a partner at Versant and director at Century, said: “Versant believes that allogeneic reagents represent the next wave of innovation in cell therapy and created Century to engineer truly off-the-shelf products to treat both hematologic and solid tumours. “Today’s financing marks an important milestone in our effort to enable cell therapies to treat a much broader array of cancer patients.” – A version of this article first appeared on our sister site, Global Corporate Venturing.

Subscribe to go deeper

GCV subscribers get access to all our proprietary data and deep-dive articles, as well as the global directory of CVC investors.



Not sure if you have a subscription?