German biotech company T-CURX GmbH has announced the first closing of a $20M (€17.7M) Series A financing round to accelerate clinical development of its non-viral CAR-T cell therapies and advance proprietary in vivo CAR-T generation technologies. The funding round was led by BiomedVC, with participation from Bayern Kapital, HighLight Capital, i&iBio Fund, and existing and new individual investors.

Clinical programmes target haematological and solid malignancies

The investment will support T-CURX’s pipeline of clinical-stage CAR-T programmes in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) and solid tumour indications. The company’s approach utilises non-viral CAR-vector and lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technologies designed to enable scalable and economical in vivo CAR-T generation.

T-CURX, based in Würzburg and Munich, was spun out from the laboratory of co-founder Professor Michael Hudecek at the University of Würzburg. The company employs Sleeping Beauty transposon-based gene transfer systems as an alternative to viral vector methods for engineering T cells with chimeric antigen receptors.

Industry investors back novel manufacturing platform

Dr Ulf Grawunder, co-founder and chief executive officer of T-CURX, commented on the financing: “I am very excited that T-CURX attracted such a high-profile, international investor’s syndicate, led by BiomedVC, for financing T-CURX’s non-clinical and clinical CAR-T technologies and CAR-T pipeline programmes, respectively. It is a testament of the high quality of T-CURX data and the promise of our non-clinical and clinical non-viral CAR-T pipeline in AML & CLL and solid tumour indications going after novel targets.”

Dr Aristotelis Nastos, managing partner and investment director at BiomedVC, added: “I am thrilled about leading a highly dedicated international syndicate of early-stage investors from Europe and Asia in this Series A financing for T-CURX. We were deeply impressed by the data on non-viral CAR-T product and technology development at T-CURX, the track-record and experience of T-CURX Founder’s and Management team and the promise of T-CURX non-viral CAR-T technolgies hold for making CAR-T therapies accessible and affordable for many cancer patients globally.”

Non-viral approach addresses manufacturing challenges

The company’s technology platform aims to address current manufacturing limitations associated with viral vector-based CAR-T production, including cost and scalability constraints. By eliminating viral vectors from the manufacturing process, T-CURX seeks to reduce production complexity whilst maintaining therapeutic efficacy across its clinical programmes targeting both liquid and solid tumours.