Flush with $126M raise, Tessa Therapeutics woos new CEO from Takeda

22 Aug 2022
endpts.com
Cell Therapy
After some repositioning — and a $126 million financing round to take it down that direction — Singapore’s Tessa Therapeutics has found a new captain to steer the ship. Thomas Willemsen is jumping from Takeda, where he was most recently SVP, Asia-Pacific, to spearhead Tessa’s drive to develop new CAR-T therapies, including both autologous and off-the-shelf ones. As president and CEO, Willemsen will be in charge of “corporate, business and development strategy,” the company added. John Ng, who served as interim CEO, will now return to his position as chief technical officer. Founded in 2012 with roots that extend all the way to Baylor College of Medicine, Tessa was originally banking on the idea that it can create a new class of T cell therapies against cancer by adapting virus-specific T cells to target virally-associated tumors like cervical and head and neck cancer — opening up new ground in solid tumors. Tessa took that idea all the way to Phase III with a lead program, TT10, that was ultimately sidelined by less-than-stellar results. Along the way, the biotech has already rotated through a couple CEOs — with Jeff Buchalter replacing co-founder Andrew Khoo before Ng was tapped for the job. John Connolly was once Tessa’s lead scientist, but he left to become the CSO at the Parker Institute, which, perhaps not so coincidentally, had backed Tessa a few years ago. The focus has now shifted to a make-or-break study of its autologous CD30-CAR-T therapy called TT11, a drug for classical Hodgkin lymphoma. The goal, Ng previously told Endpoints News , is to reach interim analysis for a pivotal trial around 2024. But the work on virus-specific T cells isn’t over. There’s also an allogeneic CD30.CAR EBVST therapy — TT11X — that uses virus-specific T cells augmented with CD30-CAR. For solid tumors the company has TT16, a combination of virus-specific T cells and an oncolytic virus that is targeting HER2. In addition to the hard-earned experience, Tessa can also boast of its own bespoke manufacturing operations, a big feature at a number of the cell therapy companies out there. “Tessa is at the forefront of developing the next generation of CAR-T therapies, including our allogeneic ‘off-the-shelf’ EBVST technology, which has demonstrated very encouraging safety and efficacy data in the ongoing Phase 1/2 clinical trial in CD30 positive lymphomas,” Willemsen said in a statement. Willemsen has spent much of his career building up what’s usually known as “rest of world” for Big Pharma. Before Takeda, he was VP of oncology for GSK’s intercontinental & emerging markets business, and prior to that he was chairman and general manager for GSK in China. But it was Merck KGaA that first brought him to Asia, paving the way for the commercial theme that’s dominated his work since then.
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