OPB-101

Outpace Bio is shooting to dose the first patient with its AI-designed cancer cell therapy in 2025, and it’s raised $144 million to reach that clinical milestone. Thursday’s series B, led by RA Capital Management, brings the biotech’s total funding to $200 million. Outpace debuted in 2021 with a $30-million A round and a platform to overcome the challenges that have hampered the efficacy of cell therapies in treating solid tumours. According to the firm, the modality has yet to reach the success achieved in haematologic malignancies as cell therapies often have weak survival and rapid inactivation in solid tumours, and can require high doses that lead to safety concerns.Outpace uses an AI-powered protein design platform to engineer cell therapies that can overcome these barriers. The company’s technologies are intended to “access novel biology unreachable by standard protein engineering approaches, allowing us to program how cell therapies function inside patients: to access the tumour, to survive / expand / functionally persist in the tumour, and to broaden the host immune response in the tumour microenvironment,” CEO Marc Lajoie explained.Lead candidate OPB-101 is a mesothelin-specific CAR-T cell therapy that has demonstrated complete elimination of cancer cells in “stringent” in vivo models. Dosing is expected to begin next year in patients with advanced platinum-resistant epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube or primary peritoneal cancer. The fresh financing will also help Outpace expand its internal and partnered pipeline, which it says is optimised for quick clinical validation and comprises programmes for diverse cell types and disease indications.New investors Qatar Investment Authority, Surveyor Capital, Sheatree Capital, Black Opal Ventures and Alexandria Venture Investments also participated in the round, as did existing investors ARTIS Ventures, Playground Global, Bristol Myers Squibb, Abstract Ventures, Civilization Ventures, Mubadala Capital, Breton Capital Ventures, WRF Capital and Sahsen Ventures.